


The Right Direction

by prepare4trouble



Series: Little By Little [43]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apologies, Blind Kanan Jarrus, Ezra doesn't run away, Family Dinners, Force Training, Gen, Kanan and Hera are space parents, Semi-Naked Kanan, Space-Parenting, Supportive Kanan and Hera, Visually Impaired Ezra Bridger, missing things, talking about feelings, waking up together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-03-26 11:49:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13857177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prepare4trouble/pseuds/prepare4trouble
Summary: Following a difficult day for everybody, Hera and Kanan try to put things right with Ezra and clarify some misunderstandings. Kanan starts to train Ezra, and Hera organizes a family dinner.





	1. Chapter 1

Hera woke feeling hair on her face.  Caught in that moment between sleep and wake, reluctant to commit fully to the idea of consciousness, she didn’t move.  Instead, she wrinkled her nose, trying to soothe the tickling sensation.  It worked, after a fashion, but only for a second.  When she stopped and tried to relax again, it returned, stronger than ever.

Still not opening her eyes — to do so would mean accepting that she was awake — she backed away, just slightly.  Keeping her body in contact with Kanan’s, she moved her head back so that the stray strands of hair no longer touched her face.  She exhaled softly through her nose, encouraging them to move a little further away, all the time trying to keep her movements to a minimum in the hopes that she wouldn’t disturb him.

She didn’t remember whether she had set an alarm the night before, it was a habit for the most part, but one that she did forget occasionally, when she knew there was nothing pressing to do early the next morning. 

Only, there  _was_  something to do.  Not base duties like mission briefings or repairs, but something equally as important.  She needed —  _they_  needed — to talk to Ezra.

She wasn’t sure what time it was.  It was tough to be certain until she turned on the light and looked at the clock.  While she slept, the light level in her quarters was always dim; there were no windows and the lighting was controlled entirely by electronics.  Back when she had spent most of her time in space, she had thought it would be nice to have a porthole to view the universe from her quarters, but now they were based on Atollon she was thankful for the lack of natural light; it meant it was easier for her to choose her own hours.

Not, of course, that she often allowed herself to sleep through the day no matter how late she had fallen into bed the night before.

Unfortunately, it mean that on rare occasions like this, she had no way to gauge the time by the light level.  It might still be the early hours of the morning, or she could have slept half the day away.  If she wanted to know one way or another, she would have to move, and potentially wake Kanan in the process.  

Although, to be fair, he had woken her enough times by stealing the blanket that even if it was too early to get up, disturbing him would almost feel fair.

She waited, lying next to him, feeling the warmth of his body.  It had been some time since she had been faced with this kind of a dilemma in the morning.  So long, in fact, that she had forgotten about it until it happened again.  Just like the problem of the hair that was somehow tickling her face again.

She frowned and edged a little further away.  It didn’t make sense.  He hadn’t moved — she knew he hadn’t, she had been right there next to him the whole time and she would have felt it — and as far as she knew, human hair wasn’t capable of independent movement.  It should stay where it was placed, but somehow it never seemed to work that way.

Hair was strange stuff.  She liked the way it looked, but she was forever glad not to have any attached to her own head.  Humans must be used to it, or maybe their scalps were less sensitive, but she couldn’t imagine feeling  _that_  all day long.

It didn’t seem to bother Kanan though.  He stirred just slightly in his sleep, adjusted his position in her bed, edged away just a little, and took the blanket with him.  Again.

She let him this time.  During the night she had fought back, struggling to keep the blanket to herself, but she was awake now, and he was still asleep.  If she disturbed him now, it would be purely out of revenge.  As fair as that sounded, he needed to rest every bit as much as she did.  More, maybe.  He hadn’t been sleeping well lately.

He hadn’t told her that of course, but she could tell just by looking at him that the previous night hadn’t been his only sleepless night.  There was a weariness to him that she recognised because she felt it herself.  Not all of it could be healed by sleep.  What was happening with Ezra was hard on all of them, but — except of course for Ezra himself — she suspected it was hardest for Kanan.

But just as he had said himself the previous night, if he had any hopes of helping Ezra, really helping him, that was something that he was going to have to get over.  He needed to put a stop to the idea that what was happening was a tragedy.  They needed to be positive.

Well, no.  False positivity wouldn’t help anybody.  But they did need to stop mourning.  They needed to move forward so they could help Ezra do the same.

She had no idea how they were going to do that.  She didn’t even know how to begin.

She still needed to know the time.  If she had slept the day away, that meant she was wasting more time by continuing to lay there.  If the day had already begun, she needed to be up, and preparing for her next move.  She raised a hand slowly, moving inch by inch, still careful not to disturb Kanan as her fingers traced the wall and found the angled edges of the light switch.  She pressed it, and blinked as light flooded the room.

Kanan didn’t react.  The sudden brightness like that would have woken her if she had still been sleeping, but the switch had made no sound, and he was unable to perceive any difference in the light level.  Just like Ezra would soon…

No.

She pushed the unhelpful thought forcibly from her mind before she could complete it.  She propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at the sleeping form next to her, warm and cosy in far more than his fair share of her blanket.  It wasn’t as late as she had worried it might be.  She could allow herself a few more moments.

With the light on now, she could see now that Kanan’s hair was free from the band he normally used to hold it back; that was why it had been tickling her face as much as it had.  She couldn’t remember whether it had been that way when he had come to her the night before, or whether it had worked itself loose during the night. Either way, the result was a tangled mess that was going to take him a long time to comb through.  She didn’t envy him that.  She glanced over at her dressing table, where he had used to keep a comb just for that purpose; it was gone.  It had been a long time since he had stayed over, and she had no idea where she might have put it.

Once, a long time ago now, she remembered combing out his hair with her fingers, coaxing the tangled strands into something neater and more presentable, fascinated by the texture of it.  It hadn’t been the first time she had touched it, but one of the first.  He had sat still, trying not to wince when her fingers snagged in a knot and tugged on the skin of his scalp.

She cringed herself at the memory, unable to imagine the sensation but sure it must be uncomfortable.

Maybe human heads were less sensitive than twi’leks’?

Or maybe she was overthinking something irrelevant to put off thinking about other, more important things.

“It’s been a while, huh?”

Kanan’s voice startled her as it cut through the silence of her quarters, and Hera almost flinched.  She didn’t, but she was certain he sensed it anyway.

If she hadn’t just heard him speak, she wouldn’t have known he was awake.  He hadn’t moved, his eyes remained closed, and he looked completely at peace.  For a moment, she wondered whether he was talking in his sleep, but he had never done that before.  Once or twice, he had screamed, but never spoken.

Maybe he had been awake the whole time that she had, laying there, pretending to sleep, sensing her as she watched the gentle movement of his chest as he breathed next to her.

“A while since I slept over, I mean,” Kanan clarified.

She nodded, she had already known what he meant.  The last time they had done this had been before they established the base on Atollon.  “Too long,” she agreed.

“And I still say your bunk is more comfortable than mine, by the way.  You can claim they’re all the same as much as you like; I don’t believe you.”

She smiled.  The last time they had had that discussion, he had invited her into his quarters to test out his bunk for herself.  She hadn’t needed too, she had already known hers was better.

“Hey, it’s  _my_  ship,” she told him.  “I was the only one here for a long time; of course I took the best quarters.”

He turned over, rolling onto his back.  His eyes were still closed, but he no longer appeared to be asleep.  He smiled in a satisfied way.  “So you finally admit it,” he said triumphantly.  “Honestly, I wasn’t sure.  I thought maybe I just sleep better when I’m with you.”

No, hers was definitely better.  “Could be that too,” she agreed.

“I guess we should do this more often then,” he told her.  “Maybe alternate between my quarters and yours, really test out the theory.”  He propped himself up just slightly on his elbows.  “How’d you sleep?”

Better than she had in months.  That didn’t mean she was going to let him get away with hogging the blanket.  “It  _might_  have been better if you’d been able to share the covers,” she told him.

He frowned thoughtfully, his brow creasing above still-closed eyes, and it occurred to her that the last time they had woken up together, he had been able to see her.  She remembered the way his eyes had slowly traced the outline of her body underneath the covers, not even pretending that he wasn’t appreciating the view.

Kanan detangled the blanket from around his body and tugged it in her direction.  He rolled over to face her, bringing the blanket with him, then pulled her in a little closer, bringing her into the warmth.

She resisted the urge to relax too much.  “Don’t,” she said.  “I don’t want to get too comfortable again, we need to get up.”

“Ten more minutes?” Kanan asked.

She sighed and closed her eyes.  “Five,” she allowed.

* * *

 

Hera woke again with a start, disoriented and absolutely certain that it had been longer than five minutes.  Something was missing.  She reached out and found the bed still warm where Kanan had been moments earlier, but he was gone.  She opened her eyes and scanned the room quickly.  He wasn’t difficult to find, standing by her desk in nothing but a pair of shorts.  As she watched, he ran his hand over the clothing she had slung over the back of her chair ready to wear the next day, exploring the fabric with his fingers.

“Kanan?” she asked

He stopped suddenly, and turned in her direction.  He didn’t look  _embarrassed_  exactly, but it did seem like he hadn’t intended to be seen.  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said.

She sat up and put her feet on the floor.  “You didn’t,” she told him.  Although, she had woken not long after he had gotten up and started doing whatever he was doing, so maybe…  “I don’t think you did, anyway,” she added.  “What are you doing?”

“Just…” he checked the empty seat of the chair with a sweep of his other hand and frowned.  “Looking for my robe.”  He folded his arms and narrowed his eyes slightly in her direction.  “You didn’t move it, did you?”

She shook her head.  “I haven’t gotten out of bed since last night.”

“Because you’ve done it before.”

Hera shook her head.   “No I…” she hesitated.  He was right, she had, actually.  She glanced around the room, hoping to find the missing item of clothing and end the discussion, but it didn’t appear to be anywhere.   “That was totally different,” she reminded him.

“Because I could see that my clothes had all disappeared back then?”

Normally, when this came up, it was in the context of practical jokes, silly stories, things that they could laugh about when they were alone together.  It was a happy memory.  Right now, Kanan actually seemed upset about it, and she wasn’t sure what to do with that.

She didn’t think he was upset though.  Not really.  At least, not about something that happened years earlier.  He turned his attention to the surface of the desk.  She had left it scattered with work from the previous day, but he ran his hand millimeters from the surface itself, not disturbing anything she had left there.

“I hung it up when I took it off last night,” he told her.  “I put it on the hook by your bed.  I  _know_  I did.”

Instinctively, she glanced at the hook; it was empty.  She checked the floor nearby, in case the robe had fallen off, but it wasn’t there either.  “It’s not there now,” she told him.

He let out a frustrated sigh.  “I  _know_  it’s not there,” he said.  “Why do you think I’m looking over here?”

He had a point.  He also seemed far more irritated by this than he should have been.  “What’s wrong?” she asked him.  “Really?”

He leaned heavily against the wall.  “Nothing,” he said.

“I know you better than that, Kanan,” she told him.

He sighed, then reconsidered.  “Fine.  It’s just, I should be past this.  Yesterday I was telling Ezra to keep track of where he puts things, then the very next day…  Sometimes I think the Force is just messing with me.  You’re  _sure_  you didn’t…”

Hera winced.  Now that he explained it, it made perfect sense.  “Sorry,” she said, “I haven’t touched it.”

For a moment she thought he was going to argue, insist that she must have done something.  He appeared to consider it, then dismiss the idea.  “Okay,” he said.  “I’m sorry.”

She folded her arms and smiled, trying to evoke a better memory.  “And the one time I  _did_  move your clothes was totally different.  For a start, it was funny,” while this would have just been cruel.  “And I did give them back.”  She had, too, after a while.  But only after she had told him what she had done, and watched, laughing as he searched under rocks and behind trees for a while.

It wasn’t as though he hadn’t gotten his own back a few times, in other ways, but she had known what they were payback for.

It all felt so long ago now, back in the early days of Kanan’s time on the Ghost, when it had seemed new and strange to have him there, when they were just learning to be comfortable with each other, pushing the boundaries of what they could get away with. 

They had taken a short break together, just a few hours on a secluded moon, setting the Ghost down not far from the edge of a lake.  They had lain together on the grass and looked at the shapes in the clouds, planned a future they already knew they weren’t going to have, and they had taken a swim in the cool water, diving and splashing until they were so tired and content that all they wanted to do was lay down and sleep.  Hera had wanted a bit of entertainment before she did.

That had been the day that she had learned that when humans were embarrassed, sometimes their entire bodies blushed.

Kanan appeared to be too trapped in the present to relive the past right now.  He shook his head and ran a hand through his knotted hair.  It snagged almost immediately and he disentangled his fingers without bothering to try to complete the maneuver.  Any other time, that would have been funny, right now he just looked so frustrated and lost that all she wanted to do was help.  She almost wished she  _had_  hidden the thing, so that she could give it back.

“Maybe I wasn’t wearing it,” he said.  “I had a lot on my mind last night.  Maybe I just forgot.”

He had definitely been wearing something, though she couldn’t say with any certainty what it had been.  One thing that she knew was that if he had turned up at her door in the middle of the night wearing nothing but the tight pair of shorts he had on now, she would have remembered.

She looked around the room again, but there was nothing, no evidence that he had even been there except for the fact of his presence.  It was baffling.  “You must have put it somewhere else,” she said, and checked the drawer underneath the bottom bunk.  There was nothing there but her own personal effects.  “Don’t worry about it, we’ll find it another time.”

Kanan sighed.  He folded his arms self-consciously across his bare chest.  “Well,  _this_  definitely won’t raise questions if I’m seen slinking back to my own room when I leave here.”

Hera raised an eyebrow.  “Slinking?  Ashamed to be seen with me?”

“What?”  He shook his head vehemently.  “No, of course not!  I just mean, it’s not very…” he shrugged, “…dignified.”

She had to laugh at that.  “When have you ever been dignified?”  She balled up the blanket they had slept under the night before.  “Here,” she told him, and tossed it in his direction.  He tensed for a split second before he reached out to his side and easily caught it in the air.

He explored it with his hands for a moment, discovered that it wasn’t the robe that he apparently still thought she might have hidden, then wrapped it around his shoulders, bunched at the top so that it didn’t trail on the ground.  “Great, thanks,” he said, unenthusiastically, and sank into the chair by her desk.  He drummed his fingers on the tabletop.  “So,” he said.  “Ezra.”

Hera shivered in the sudden loss of the warmth from her blanket.  She rubbed her hands up and down the tops of her arms.  They were going to have to talk to Ezra, and they were going to have to do it sooner rather than later.  But not that soon.  Not until she had a warm shower and a hot caf.  And not until Kanan had some clothes on.

The blanket that he was holding around him like a cape had slipped open a little at the top, and part of his chest was exposed.  “We’ll discuss it over breakfast,” she said.  “I can’t talk to you like that, you’re too distracting.”

Kanan grinned widely at that, and made no attempt to cover up.  “I was trying to get dressed,” he said.  “ _Someone_  moved my robe.”

He had a point.  He also still seemed to think she was behind its disappearance.  Well, at least he didn’t seem so frustrated about the whole thing anymore.  “Fine, take ten minutes to get your ‘dignity’ back, and I’ll get the caf ready.”

Kanan nodded.  He got to his feet still holding the blanket loosely around his shoulders.  “Ten minutes,” he agreed, and headed for the door.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raise your hand if you're as terrified for the finale as I am...
> 
> I've managed to avoid spoilers so far though. And staying off tumblr is doing wonders for my productivity!

Kanan hesitated briefly outside Ezra’s quarters.  He could sense Ezra’s presence on the other side of the door just as clear as he would have been able if he were inside with him.  Walls and doors were a barrier only to sight, not to the Force.

Ezra was alone; Zeb had left earlier that morning to finish off his sweep of the base perimeter.  He had been putting a lot more time and effort into that task than Kanan had expected, and Kanan had to wonder what he was doing out there – or what he was finding – that was so interesting.

Knowing Zeb wouldn’t be there, he had briefly considered taking the meeting to Ezra’s quarters, but he had dismissed the idea almost immediately.  The last thing he wanted was for Ezra to feel trapped again.  Yesterday, Hera had chosen to speak to Ezra in the Phantom.  Not only that, but she had taken it up into orbit around the planet while she did.  She had done it for a reason: to deliberately leave him with literally nowhere to go if he felt the need to bolt.

While Kanan had to admit it was frustrating when Ezra decided to disappear without warning, and he admired her ingenuity, he wasn’t about to replicate it.  Intruding upon Ezra’s personal space for the discussion wouldn’t be  _as_  bad as that, but it would still make it more difficult for him to leave.

Of course, being Ezra, he had any number of hiding places around the base.  Kanan knew a few of them, some he had discovered by accident and one he had found while actively searching for Ezra one day.  Ezra wasn’t short on places to run to if he felt the need.  Still, nothing was quite like being able to hide behind the door of your own quarters.

Suddenly, Kanan felt a little guilty for watching him through the walls.

There was a calmness about Ezra that felt unfamiliar.  Although Kanan could still sense that same low-level anxiety buzzing below the surface that he had been aware of for weeks now, it felt further away somehow; less urgent.  It was almost as though Ezra were sleeping.

No, not sleeping.  More like meditating.  Not in exactly the same way that Kanan did, not as deeply, but he realized now that he was witnessing an attempt to commune with the Force; his student was beginning to flex those muscles that he had resisted for so long.  This was good news.  In time, those muscles would strengthen just as his other Force abilities had, and they would be there for him to call upon them when he needed them.

Which he would, very soon.

A swell of sorrow hit him at that thought, and he pushed it back, tried not to feel it.  He had said it to Hera the night before, and he had meant it; they needed to stop thinking like that.  There were far worse things that the universe could throw at a person than the loss of a sense.  It was going to be hard for him to cope with, for a time, but he was going to be okay.  Dwelling on their own initial feelings about it wasn’t going to help Ezra.

Not only that, but for a Force-sensitive with Ezra’s talent for connections, even if they tried not to show those feelings, it could be dangerous.  He would pick up on them easily, possibly without even realizing what he was doing.

If every stray thought had the potential to make things harder for him, the people closest to him had a responsibility to control those thoughts.

That was so much easier said than done, of course.

He deliberately steered his mind back to the moment; dwelling in Ezra’s future or in Kanan’s own past wouldn’t help anything.  Ezra still appeared to be meditating, and Kanan wondered whether he had been doing this regularly without him noticing, or whether it was a new development.  Although he had never  _enjoyed_  meditation, Ezra had proved himself more than capable of doing it in the past; for shorter periods than Kanan usually liked to, and certainly not as frequently, but he could definitely do it when he chose to.  And his work with the dokma incorporated a lot of the same skills and concentration needed to commune with the Force.

It was unfortunate that Kanan needed to interrupt him now, but he had no choice in the matter.  They needed to do this sooner rather than later, and there would always be some reason he could find to put it off.

He bypassed the door chime, with its more intrusive sound, and opted for knocking quietly on the door.  It was one thing to disturb someone’s meditation, it was another to do it with a loud, invasive sound.  He waited.

On the other side of the door, Ezra’s attention shifted as he roused himself from his meditation.  The door opened, allowing him entry into the room.

“Hey, Kanan,” Ezra said.

He didn’t sound surprised to find him there, it was almost as though he had expected him.  Maybe he had; he had to know Kanan would come by at some point today.  Kanan wondered whether he had sensed his approach, or maybe his hesitation outside the room.

“Lesson time?” Ezra asked.

Kanan shook his head.  There  _would_  have to be a lesson today, and he hadn’t forgotten that.  One thing he needed to do was tell Ezra when it would be, so he could be ready for it.  They probably wouldn’t be able to stick to a regular schedule all the time, but it was important that they both had an idea of when they would be doing what.  It would be unfair for Kanan to just come by like this when he had some free time and expect Ezra to drop everything, it was more important than that.  It wasn’t something that should be fitted into spare time, like their lessons had often been in the past.  It needed to be scheduled, to ensure that it happened, and that it happened every day.

“We’ll get to that,” he promised.  “Later.”

“Oh.  Okay… so…” Ezra’s feet shuffled on the floor of his quarters, and through the Force, Kanan got the impression of him wrapping his arms around himself as he stood, waiting.

On the subject of lessons, Kanan realized that he had allowed himself, and Ezra, to slip into bad habits recently.  Just a few short weeks ago – and it was difficult to believe that it had only been that long since he had learned the truth about the secret that Ezra was hiding – but just a few weeks earlier, when he had suspected, but not yet known, they had still been training with the Force regularly.  It hadn’t been daily, but then it never had been.  But several times a week they had been training with the Force, or sparring with lightsabers.  Since the moment that Ezra had told him what was happening, without Kanan even really noticing, they had reduced the number of lessons and eventually they had stopped.  It wasn’t fair.

There was no wonder Ezra had come to him yesterday demanding a lesson.  It wasn’t only the things he had discussed with Hera, it was what Kanan had been doing; what he  _hadn’t_  been doing.  Ezra must feel so abandoned, left alone to deal with everything by himself while the rest of the crew carried on with their lives around him.

Kanan wanted to kick himself.

“What?” Ezra asked.  He sounded curious; concerned, even.

Kanan realized that he was open to the Force, and didn’t know whether it was his emotions or his body language that had had given him away.  He shook his head.  “Nothing,” he said.  “We  _are_  going to have a lesson, okay?  This afternoon.  But before we do, Hera and I need to talk to you.  About what happened yesterday.”

“What do you mean?  What happened?” Ezra asked.  There was confusion and worry in his voice now, like he thought something significant might have happened and he hadn’t been informed.

“No.”  Kanan shook his head.  “That’s not what I… I mean what happened between you and Hera.”

For a moment, Ezra didn’t reply.  “Oh,” he said finally, dully.  “Right.  That.”  He sighed.  “Look, it’s fine.  I get it.  I talked to Zeb last night and he said some stuff about… well, maybe Hera was right.  Maybe I…” he faltered just slightly, and took a deep breath to calm himself.  “Maybe I  _shouldn’t_  be on missions right now.  Hera’s in command, and it’s her decision.  It’s her responsibility.”  He sat down on the bottom bunk, apparently not ready to go with him.

Kanan frowned.  He didn’t know what he had expected Ezra to say, but that wasn’t it.  “That’s… good,” he said.  And it was good.  It also didn’t make any difference; they still needed to have this discussion.

“I still think I made the right choice,” Ezra added.  “I still want to learn how to do everything without seeing.  You’re not going to change my mind about that.”

“I know,” Kanan told him.  “I don’t want to.  You’re right; you do need to learn that, and the sooner the better.”

Even with the most optimistic of estimates, Ezra was looking at just a few short years of sight, and much much less than that of useable vision.  Nobody wanted to think about it, but it was a fact, and one that they couldn’t get away from.  He needed to be working on ways that he was going to cope.  He needed to already have  _been_  working on it.  Ezra had known for over a year that this was coming.  If he had been honest about things sooner, maybe they would have had some of that time.

Not all of it, of course.  There would have been a period where Kanan simply wouldn’t have known what to do, and a time after he returned from Malachor when he might not have been able to…

He wondered how things might have been different during those months if he had known.  Would he have reacted differently to the loss of his own sight?  Would he have forced himself to rejoin the universe sooner than he had?  Would he, perhaps, have have looked to Ezra for guidance?

It didn’t matter.  None of that had happened, and he had learned a long time ago that there was no point dwelling in ‘what ifs’.  Even as things stood, they should be a month into these lessons.  There were things that Ezra should already know how to do that they hadn’t even touched; that they hadn’t even thought about.

“But you said…” Ezra began.

Kanan raised a hand, the universal signal for silence.  “We’ll talk about it with Hera, okay?”

For a moment, he thought Ezra was was going to protest, but instead he sighed.  “Okay, but does it have to be right now?  I was just in the middle of something.”

“It doesn’t ‘ _have_  to be’ at all,” Kanan told him.  “It’s not an order; we’d just like to talk to you. ”

“I know,” Ezra said.  “I didn’t mean…” he sighed.  “Okay, fine, let’s go.”  He hesitated.  “She… doesn’t want to talk in the Phantom again, does she?”

Kanan shook his head.  “In the lounge.  Nobody else is home; we won’t be interrupted.”  He headed for the door, then stopped and turned back to Ezra, still seated on the bunk.  “The thing you said you were in the middle of,” he said.  “Were you meditating?”

“No,” Ezra said quickly.  The bunk creaked slightly as he moved.  “I mean… kinda?  Not really, but… I mean, you’re that one that’s always going on about how important it is.”  He said that almost accusingly, like he was embarrassed, and it was Kanan’s fault.  Like he had been caught in the act of doing something he shouldn’t.

“It  _is_  important,” Kanan assured him.  “If you can deepen your connection to the Force, it’ll make it easier for you to use it to sense the world around you.  It’ll make everything easier, and the more you do it, the more it’ll help.”

Ezra sighed, sounding unconvinced.  Kanan took a few steps across the room and sat down next to him on Zeb’s bunk.  “If you want, we can do it together,” he said.  “Having another person there can help.  That’s how we were taught in the Temple; the younglings took guidance from a Master that could sense what they were doing and give advice.”

Ezra appeared to consider it for a moment, then dismissed the idea.  “It’s not that I don’t want to,” he said, then sighed.  “Well, I mean, I  _don’t_  want to, but that’s another story.  It’s just that like we said yesterday, there are other things I need to know.  I don’t want to waste the lessons sitting around with my eyes closed when I could be… uh…”

He trailed off and forced out a sigh.  Kanan sensed a strange mixture of anxiety and amusement within him.  He waited, allowing Ezra time to either finish what he was trying to say, or not.

“Uh… when I could be  _walking_  around with my eyes closed, I guess,” Ezra said.  He laughed once, quick and nervous, then took a deep, calming breath.  “Sorry,” he added.

Kanan shook his head, unable to decide whether Ezra was apologizing for telling Kanan he didn’t want to meditate with him, or for the attempt at a joke.  Either way, it didn’t matter.  He clasped a hand onto Ezra’s shoulder and squeezed lightly.  “We can set aside extra time for it, if you want, it doesn’t have to eat into the other things.  I know you don’t believe me, but it really will help with everything else.”

He didn’t only mean with the lessons that he intended to teach him.  A deeper connection to the Force would definitely help with that, but sometimes just taking some time to sit and be calm, and not dwell on what was happening, was a huge help.  When every waking moment was filled with one overriding thought — and for Ezra that must be how it was right now even if he didn’t realize it — the ability to get away from that was important.

Ezra sighed.  “Maybe.  Yeah.”

It wasn’t a no; that was progress at least.

“Come on,” Kanan said, turning back to the door.  “We’ll talk about it later.”

As he pressed the control and the door opened in front of him, he heard Ezra get reluctantly to his feet and follow him out.


	3. Chapter 3

It was going to be fine.

Whatever it was, whatever Hera wanted, it wasn’t going to be a repeat of the day before.  If nothing else, he already knew he wasn’t going to be trapped aboard the Phantom.  Hera probably wasn’t going to turn out the lights and ask him to walk around either.  If neither of those things happened — even if only  _one_  of those things didn’t happen — it was going to be better.  
  
So why did he find himself dragging his feet?  
  
Ezra tried to make himself walk a little faster, to catch up with Kanan who was a few steps ahead of him in the corridor, but apparently his unconscious mind had other ideas.  He didn’t want to be here.  He wanted to be back in his room.  Or better yet, he wanted to be in one of his hiding places.  One of the ones he knew Kanan hadn’t found, somewhere that nobody would bother him; where he could sit and think in peace. Or just sit and  _not_  think, because thinking could be dangerous right now, his mind walked down paths that took him to scary places.  Places that he was going to have no choice but to visit one day, but not yet.

Deep breath.  It was going to be fine.  
  
His own boots scuffed on the floor as he allowed his speed to drop a little further.  He folded his arms, trying not to feel like an obstinate child, but he had done this already, he had no desire to do it again.  
  
Whatever it was that Hera wanted to talk about, he was going to assume it wasn’t to apologize for making a mistake and put him back on missions, and so, honestly, he didn’t care.  He shouldn’t be on missions anyway, she was right.  Zeb was right.  It was too much of a risk, if anybody got hurt because he didn’t see the danger…  
  
Maybe she had thought of some extra conditions she wanted to pile on top of the ones she had presented him with the night before; maybe something else had occurred to her overnight and she wanted to add them onto the three impossible ones she had already given him.  Maybe she wanted to tell him the ‘learn how to do everything’ option was off the table if he didn’t do the other things too; he knew she had never really meant to offer it.  
  
Maybe she just wanted to go over the whole thing again, but with Kanan there.  
  
Whatever it was, he didn’t want to hear it.  Not now.  Probably not ever.  It had been bad enough the first time

At least this time, he wasn’t walking in there assuming one thing only to find out he was completely wrong.  Maybe Hera hadn’t deliberately tricked him, as he had thought at first, but telling him to meet her on the Phantom had been cruel, it had him convinced he was back on duty and heading out on a mission.  Instead, he had found himself trapped aboard, unable to get away, having the worst conversation of his life.  
  
And that had been before she had deliberately turned out the light on him just to prove a point.

He had to admit though, it was a point she had needed to make.  Somehow.  Not that way, but somehow.  He was already all too aware that when he couldn’t see, he was essentially useless, but he had convinced himself that it was okay, because it was so unlikely to happen.  He realized now that didn’t matter; if it  _could_  happen, it was a risk.  He had wanted to show her that he was okay, that at the very least, if the lights went out he would be able to get himself to safety, or… something.

He hadn’t even been able to bring himself to get up and move around the cabin of the Phantom, something he should have been able to do by touch, without even trying to use the Force to see.

Even as a child, he had never been afraid of the dark.  He still wasn’t, not really.  He was afraid of a future where he couldn’t see, but it didn’t matter, people would think he was afraid of the dark.  It was embarrassing, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Well, not until he could learn what he needed to know, and gain the confidence to carry on as normal the next time the lights went out.  He would get there, eventually.  He had to.   He needed to be better than this.  He wanted to be back on duty, and he wasn’t going to get that until he could prove he was competent at everything, even when he was completely bl… blindfolded.  
  
At the rate his lessons were going, and the rate his vision was getting worse, he was going to need that skill just to get around the base long before Hera even considered letting him go on missions again.

It seemed to be getting worse so much faster than he had expected.  He wasn’t sure how long he really had before… it would be tough to say for certain  _when_  it happened.  It wasn’t going to be like it had been for Kanan; things were changing slowly.  Not slowly enough for him,  but gradually.  At what point would he officially move from ‘visually impaired’ to…

Blind.  
  
A few steps ahead of him, Kanan stopped and turned to face him.  “Ezra?  What’s wrong?” he asked.  He sounded worried; he had noticed something.  
  
Something like the swirling pit of dread inside Ezra’s stomach, perhaps?  He couldn’t believe he had actually been feeling not so bad a few minutes earlier.  Maybe the meditation had calmed him for a time, and now that he had stopped, everything had come flooding back; maybe there were advantages to meditation after all.  But now, with his thoughts free to wander where they chose again, reality had once again started to crush him.

It was just his sight.  He was a Jedi; he didn’t need it.  Kanan was okay, he would be…

He was going to be okay.  
  
He folded his arms a little tighter, took a deep breath and reached out into the Force, trying to return to that feeling of calm he had experienced earlier today.  He resisted the urge to hide his Force-presence; he had promised to stop doing it, and Kanan had already sensed that there was something wrong anyway.  He smiled, Kanan couldn’t  _see_  it of course, but he hoped it would be translated into his voice.  “Nothing’s wrong,” he said.  He pushed as much confidence as he could into his tone, and was pleased with the result.  “Why would you think anything’s wrong?”  
  
Kanan rested a hand on the wall and tilted his head slightly to one side.  The result was a pose almost as though he was giving Ezra a confused look, and Ezra assumed that was exactly what he had intended.  Kanan frowned.  “Well, you did just kinda… pause in the middle of the corridor,” he said.  
  
Pointlessly, Ezra looked down at his own feet, and confirmed that they were, in fact, not moving.  He genuinely hadn’t realized.  He shrugged.  “Yeah,” he confirmed.  He didn’t give any kind of explanation; what would be the point?  
  
Kanan took a few steps in his direction.  “Hey,” he said.  He placed a hand on Ezra’s shoulder.  “It’s okay.  We just want to talk to you.  It’s nothing bad, I promise.”  
  
It was all bad.  Right now, everything was bad, and it kept getting worse.  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Ezra said breezily.  “I’m fine.  Stop worrying so much.”  Without giving himself time to think, he walked ahead of Kanan, through the door.  
  
Hera was seated at the holotable, holding a datapad in one hand and tapping at the screen.  The moment he entered, she turned to look at him, switched off the device and put it down on the table.  She smiled welcomingly.  
  
Ezra looked away, down at his feet.  The Force told him of her disappointment at that, and her concern for him.  He tried not to care, but it was impossible.  He glanced up at her as he sat down opposite, and gave a small smile.  “Hey,” he whispered.  
  
The door had been halfway to closing when it opened again and Kanan entered after him.  Hera smiled at him, too, but he didn’t respond either; probably didn’t even notice.  How could he?  The Force allowed him to sense the emotions of people around him, just as it did Ezra, but small facial expressions?  Probably not.  
  
One more thing he hadn’t really considered yet, that he now realized he was going to miss out on soon enough.  
  
He tried not to think about it, there was no point.  He cleared his throat and looked at Hera.  “So, Kanan said you needed me for something?”  
  
“Yes.  I…” Hera paused, and scooted over a little to make room for Kanan.  He sat down next to her.  She glanced at him, and Ezra could sense something from her that didn’t feel familiar; not coming for Hera, anyway.  She was uncertain, maybe even nervous.  She didn’t  _look_  nervous though, and she probably didn’t want him to know that she was.  Ezra’s heart sank.  Whatever this was, it was going to be bad.  
  
Kanan didn’t glance back at her, obviously, but Ezra caught the movement of his arm as his hand held hers underneath the table.  
  
Hera relaxed.  She took a breath.  “First,” she said, “I want to apologize.”  
  
“We,” Kanan added softly.  
  
Hera glanced at him again, then shook her head.  “We,” she confirmed, “but let me do this.”  
  
Ezra frowned.  He looked from Hera to Kanan and back again, searching for some kind of explanation.  The last thing he had expected was an apology.  “It’s okay,” he said.  “Really, I get it…”  
  
Hera turned back to face him, giving him her full attention.  “I’m not sure you do.  I want to be clear about this, because I wasn’t, when we talked before.” She took a deep breath.  “I’m sorry for how things went yesterday.  I’m sorry for not including Kanan — I know you’re both unhappy about that, and that’s fair.  I’m sorry for not explaining why I wanted you on the Phantom; I should have known you’d assume we were going on a mission.  Trapping you there to make you talk was… unfair.”  
  
Ezra glanced at Kanan, trying to gauge his reaction.  He couldn’t tell whether this was something the two of them had discussed in advance, or whether he was hearing this for the first time too.  
  
“I’m not sorry for the decisions I made,” she added.  “I’m not sorry for what I told you.  But for how I did it, yes.  It was a mistake.”  
  
Ezra shuffled a little uncomfortably.  Well, at least he knew where she stood.  She wasn’t going back on any decisions, she had just realized everything he had hated about the conversation, and wanted to put it right.  “It’s fine,” he mumbled.  “Anyway, I guess you weren’t wrong.  I shouldn’t be on missions.  Not ’til I can…” he faltered and looked away; he didn’t know how to put it, not without actually saying the words.  “You know,” he said.  
  
“You can return to active duty as soon as I’m satisfied it’s safe. I don’t need you to be able to do everything without sight; I don’t need you to be Kanan.  I just need to be confident you’re not going to be in any danger.”  
  
Ezra almost laughed at that.  “We’re always in danger,” he told her.  
  
“Ezra…” Kanan said warningly.  
  
Hera touched him lightly on the arm.  “No, he’s right,” she said.  “I need to know you have a plan if things go wrong.  I said it yesterday, but I think you misunderstood.  I don’t need to know exactly what you’re going to do in every possibly event.   _I_  don’t even need to know what you’re going to do at all, not as long as I know I can trust  _you_  to have a plan.  Even if it’s just to carry a light source with you, or stick close to someone else.”  
  
“And what if the flashlight breaks?” Ezra asked, “Or like you said yesterday, the light gives away my position?  Or what if something happens to the other person?”  
  
Hera pursed her lips.  “I don’t know,” she said.  “These are things we’re going to have to figure out together.”  
  
Kanan shook his head.  “You’re arguing against yourself, Ezra,” he said.  
  
He knew it, too.  He didn’t care.  “All I’m saying is, being able to do everything b…” he took a breath.  Some days it was easier to say than others, but today was not one of those days.  “Being able to do everything blind… it’s the ultimate contingency plan, right?”  
  
“It is,” Kanan agreed, “and we’re going to get you there, I promise, but it’s going to take time.  In the meantime, Hera’s just saying that’s not the only thing she wants you to do, okay?  It’s not an either-or situation.  The other things she told you you need to do, being honest, keeping us informed.  Going to appointments with Enno-fifteen.  You’re still going to have to do all that even if you are working on things with me at the same time.”  
  
Ezra slouched a little in his seat.  “I am honest,” he said, ignoring the mention of the med-droid for now.  “Now, anyway…”  
  
“After keeping this a secret for a year,” Kanan said.  He sighed, and shook his head apologetically, “Yeah, we know you’re honest, Ezra.  You just need to make sure you keep doing that.  And it goes both ways too.  Hera and I, we’re going to have to be more honest with you.  We’re going to keep you up-to-date on decisions we’re making, we’re not going to spring things on you like we both did yesterday.  We’re going to start lessons again, and I’m going to set up as close to a regular training schedule as we can manage.  I want to combine different skills, so we’re not making everything about your sight.  Force lessons like we always used to, sparring,  _and_  ways to use the Force to…” he hesitated.

  
“See?” Ezra finished for him.  
  
Kanan frowned, like that hadn’t been the word he was reaching for.  “In a manner of speaking.  And then there’s the things you’re going to need to know that have nothing to do with the Force.”  
  
The things Kanan had told him about the day before.  And more besides, because Ezra didn’t believe for a moment that those few things were all of it.  There was still so much that he hadn’t even thought about.  
  
“And on that subject,” Kanan continued.  “I owe you an apology too.  I dumped a lot of stuff on you yesterday, and I didn’t mean…”  
  
“It’s fine,” Ezra said again, quickly, interrupting him before he could finish.  “It’s good.  It’s things I w… well, I didn’t  _want_  to know, but I need to.  What’s going to happen, what it’s going to be like.  If I don’t know before, how can I get ready?”  
  
Kanan’s jaw tightened a little, but whatever he was thinking, he didn’t say it.  If they had been alone, Ezra might have asked, but with Hera there, he found himself holding back.  If it was something bad, he didn’t want to hear it with an audience.  
  
“It’s not fine,” Kanan told him.  “You’re right, you  _do_  need to know those things, but that was the wrong way to do it.  I let my frustrations out on you, and it wasn’t fair.”  
  
Ezra shrugged.  “Hey, it’s not like I haven’t done the same thing.  And I can almost guarantee I’m going to do it again more than once over the next few…” years?  More?  However long it would take before he was not only completely blind, but also okay with it, experienced enough and used to it enough that things didn’t bother him anymore.  It was a distant, far-off future that he couldn’t even imagine, and didn’t particularly want to.  One thing was for certain, it would take time.  
  
Longer than Kanan had had, definitely.  
  
“You’re allowed,” Kanan told him.  “I’m supposed to be the one helping  _you_  here.”  
  
Ezra stared down at his hands and tried not to notice the all too obvious blurring and softening of the image.  It was tough to tell for certain; light levels made a difference, and some days were worse than others, but he was sure it was so much worse than it had been even a month ago.  In another month it would be worse still.  In a year; two…

“I think sometimes I forget how new this is for you, too,” he said.  His voice came out almost a whisper.  “I mean, of course you’re still… I get it.  I guess you hate it as much as I do.  As I’m going to.  It’s only been about a year since you… I know I’m not going to be okay a year after it happens.”

At this point, he wasn’t sure he was ever going to be okay again.  
  
Ezra was still staring down at his own hands on the surface of the holotable, unwilling to bring himself to look at either Kanan or Hera.  He flinched at the unexpected feeling of a hand on his shoulder, and realized a second too late that without him noticing, Kanan had gotten to his feet and moved to the other side of the table.  His fingers squeezed his shoulder lightly, and pulled him a little closer.  Ezra leaned in to the awkward embrace.  
  
“I’m okay,” Kanan told him.  “And you’ll be more okay than you think.” He squeezed a little tighter, then let him go.  “I promise.  I know you’re scared, but it’s going to work out, I’m going to make sure of it.”  
  
Ezra sucked in a shaky breath and nodded, willing his eyes not to fill with tears, then willing them not to fall.  He had been almost fine until a moment ago, and now suddenly he… wasn’t.  
  
Funny how that happened.  How it kept happening.  Ezra continued to stare down unblinkingly at the tabletop.  “I’m not scared,” he said.  
  
It was a lie, but at the same time, it wasn’t.  He was terrified of what was coming, and Kanan knew it.  Hera too, he had to assume.  Everything that reminded him of it made that fear worse; when Hera had switched the lights out in the Phantom, or the night when he had spent too long trying to communicate with the dokma and the sun had gone down – that walk back to the base had been one of the most frightening of his life.  But every time, it had been temporary, and he had known it wouldn’t last.  
  
If the syndrome did something unexpected and he lost his sight tomorrow, he would be terrified, and he didn’t know how long – if ever – it would be before that went away.  But that wasn’t going to happen.  He had time to prepare, and then maybe… maybe by then it wouldn’t feel as bad.  
  
“That’s good, Ezra,” Hera told him, sounding unconvinced.  
  
Ezra shook his head.  It wasn’t, not really.  “I  _don’t_  mean I’m okay with it.  And if… when it happens, I’ll be…”  
  
It was impossible to explain.   _He_  didn’t even really know what he meant.  He was scared, but he could find hope that things wouldn’t be as bad as he thought.  
  
He took a breath.  “I mean, it’s not going to happen now, or tomorrow, or anything like that.  And I know Kanan’s going to help me work things out, so when… when it does happen, maybe I won’t be scared, maybe I won’t even mind…” that was the wrong word, “maybe it won’t feel so bad.  Because I’ll be ready for it.”  
  
“That’s what we’re aiming for,” Kanan told him.  “More or less, anyway.”  He hesitated, blinked and turned away, as though even blind, he didn’t want to meet Ezra’s eyes.  “You’re going to mind, though, Ezra,”  he told him, gently.  “You’re going to be frustrated sometimes, and you’re going to think about what you lost.  You’re going to miss it.  No matter how ready you are, I don’t think you’re going to get a pass on that.”  
  
Hera frowned.  “Kanan…” she began, almost warningly, like she wanted to stop him veering into that territory again.  
  
It didn’t matter, though.  Kanan wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know.  Ezra nodded.  “I know I won’t; I didn’t mean it like that.  But you’re helping.  You already helped.  Even before you knew, even without meaning to.  Watching what you’ve learned how to do the past year, I realized maybe I can still be useful; it doesn’t have to be over.”  
  
Hera reached for his hands across the table and gripped tightly.  “Of course it doesn’t.”  
  
But it wasn’t that simple.  Or, it was, but he hadn’t always realized it.  In the worst moments, he had used to think that they might reject him if they found out; declare him no longer of any use, abandon him.  The rest of the time, when he managed to control the spiraling panic, he had known that wasn’t going to happen, not really.  But he had believed, for a long time, that he would be useless to them.  He imagined being a burden, and eventually slinking off for himself to free them of the obligation.  
  
What happened to Kanan had been terrible, and Ezra hated himself for thinking it, but it had actually helped.  Not helped  _Kanan_ , of course, but still.  
  
Ezra sucked in his bottom lip and began to gnaw at a piece of loose skin.  “Are we done?” he asked.  “Can I go now?”  
  
Hera shook her head.  “Nearly,” she said.  “Before you do, we want to talk about what’s going to happen next.”  
  
Ezra took a breath and sank back into his seat; he had been halfway to standing up, ready to fell back to the relative safety of his quarters.  He bit back a flippant comment about knowing what was going to happen, and sat, waiting.  
  
“Firstly, lessons,” Kanan said.  “We’re going to start today, and we’re going to do something every day.”  
  
Every day.  Ezra nodded.  It was good, in a way.  It was a lot, but he needed to start learning things, and the more he did the better.  
  
“Every day?” Hera asked.  “Kanan, are you sure?”  
  
Kanan shook his head.  “Honestly, I’m not sure about anything.  Maybe that’s too much, maybe we’ll have to rethink it.  But I figure if we start off trying for every day, and Ezra, if it’s too much for you, you need to let me know, okay?”  
  
“It’ll be fine,” Ezra told him.  
  
“But if it  _isn’t_  you need to let me know.  Maybe we can look at doing less, or maybe we could think about changing the structure of the lessons, or doing different things for some of them, or… I don’t know.  The point is, like Hera said about honesty, if something isn’t working for you, you need to let me know.  If you don’t, how am I going to fix it?”  
  
Ezra nodded.  Put like that, it made sense.  “Okay,” he agreed.  
  
“I’m going to spend some time this morning thinking through what I’m going to teach you, and when.  I’ll take any suggestions you have on board, and I know I’m going to make changes to the plan as we go, but I’m going to arrive at the lesson this afternoon with an idea what we’re doing.  It’ll be better than last time.  Okay?”  
  
Ezra nodded again.  “Yeah,” he said.  
  
“Good, so secondly,” Kanan said, “you’re overdue for an appointment with Enno-fifteen.  You’re going to make one, and you’re going to go.  I can go with you if you want, or Hera can, or you can go alone, but you need to go.  I know I told you you didn’t have to, but that was wrong.  It’s important you know what’s happening…”

“I  _know_  what’s happening,” Ezra insisted.  If he somehow managed to forget, ‘blind lessons’ every day were definitely going to remind him, he didn’t need something else to help him remember, and most of all, he didn’t need to be poked and prodded by a droid that was probably cheering for him to lose his sight quicker so it could study him.  
  
Hera reached across the table and touched his hand.  “You know that’s not what we mean.  I know you don’t like N015, and I understand it.  If I could get another droid to the base, I would, but it’s an expert, I can’t justify swapping it for a less qualified model.  Like I said yesterday, you need to understand if things are progressing the way the droid expects.  You need to know where you’re at, and what to expect.  That way, if anything unusual is happening, you’ll know about it; N015 will know about it…”

“And you’ll know about it,” Ezra finished for her.  
  
Hera pursed her lips.  “Yes,” she said.  “If it’s relevant.  Because you’ll tell me.”  
  
He sighed, and nodded.  “Okay,” he agreed.  “Fine, I’ll go.  Just don’t expect me to like it.”  
  
“Don’t worry,” Hera assured him.  “I’d never ask that of anybody,”  
  
Ezra nodded.  He noticed neither one of them had told him how quickly he had to make the appointment.  Maybe they were right, he did need to do it, but it didn’t have to be today.  
  
“So, can I…” he asked, indicating the door with a nod of his head.  It wasn’t like he really had anything he needed to do; a busy day of sitting around beckoned, interrupted by a lesson with Kanan that he both wanted and wanted to hide from, but doing nothing was preferable to this.  
  
Hera nodded.  “I think we’re done.” She glanced at Kanan for confirmation.  
  
“Yeah.  How about we meet up this afternoon?” Kanan told him.  “After lunch, about one, okay?”  
  
Ezra nodded.  “Can’t wait,” he said, in a tone that implied the opposite, then slid out of his seat and headed for the door before either one of them thought of something else they needed to talk about.  It actually hadn’t been as bad as he had been expecting, that didn’t mean he wanted to prolong it for any longer than he had to.


	4. Chapter 4

“Well,” Kanan said, leaning back in his seat in a satisfied way.  “It wasn’t perfect, but that could have gone a lot worse.” **  
**

Hera sighed.  He was right, of course.  She knew first-hand how badly it could have gone; she had already been through it the day before.  “I just hope this goes a way to repairing the damage.”

Kanan frowned; whether it was at her tone, her words, or whatever he was sensing from her through the Force, she wasn’t sure.  “I don’t think there was any real damage done,” he said.  “Ezra’s more resilient than we give him credit for sometimes.  I mean, this is testing him to the limits right now, but a couple of uncomfortable conversations aren’t going to break him.  Look at everything he’s been through in his life already.  He’s tougher than he seems.”

Kanan was right, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.  They had all been through a lot, and it didn’t seem like things were going to get better anytime soon.  Toughness was necessary for the struggle against the Empire, but they shouldn’t needed it at home, with family.  She had made a mistake, but she had fixed it.  She  _hoped_  she had fixed it.

“I was thinking,” she said.  “It’s been a while since we did something together, all of us.”

Kanan nodded.  “Well, we’ve been a little preoccupied,” he said.

“I know.  That’s my point.  We’ve been so busy trying to fix things and organize missions, that we’ve forgotten to spend time together.  Maybe if we’d still been doing that, we’d have been able to communicate better in the first place.”

Not necessarily, of course.  But maybe.  And anyway, she missed them all.  Spending the night with Kanan again had reminded her of what had been absent from her life since arriving at the base.  Everything had started to change around that time, and not all of it for the better.  It wasn’t because of the base, of course, far from it.  But that was a factor.  It used to be just the six of them, together in close quarters.  They couldn’t have avoided one another if they tried.  Now, she sometimes went days without seeing Sabine or Zeb.  Ezra had been growing increasingly more distant too, although his reasons were obviously different.

“So what do you suggest?” Kanan asked.  “It’s not like we can all head out to Lothal and launch an attack on the Empire together.  For one thing, it goes against our orders right now, for another, you’ve just told Ezra he can’t go on missions just yet.  I’m no expert, but I think taking him on a mission might send mixed messages.”

Hera rolled her eyes.  “Thanks,” she said.  “That was exactly what I was going to suggest doing, it’s a good thing you’re here.”

Kanan smiled.  He edged a little closer to her on the padded bench that surrounded the holotable, and snaked an arm gently around her shoulders underneath her lekku.  “You’re right,” he said.

“That it’s a good thing you’re here?”

“Well, obviously.” His smile widened into almost a grin, then faded.  “But I mean about the other thing.  It’s good that everyone has other friends and connections around the base, but sometimes it might be nice to just come together and talk.  About stupid stuff.  Not about the Empire, or the war, not about  _Ezra_.  Just…” he hesitated, “whatever we used to talk about before.”

She nodded.  “Honestly though, we mostly used to talk about the Empire.  And Ezra.”

That wasn’t completely true, of course, but certainly since Kanan had begun to train Ezra, and since they had become more and more focused on the efforts of the Rebellion, those things had started to come up more and more often in conversation.  Taking on an apprentice had been a huge thing for Kanan, and obviously Ezra hadn’t been the  _only_  thing they talked about, but he had featured pretty highly a lot of the time.

“Oh.”  Kanan frowned then shook his head.  “Well… Maybe it’s time we changed that.”

Hera leaned in a little, resting some of her weight against him.  “I was thinking we get together for a meal,” she said.  “Like we used to back when we were based around Lothal.  Only if people want to, of course, but it’d be nice to get together and think about something else for a while.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Kanan agreed.

The idea had come from Kanan, actually, indirectly.  He had said the night before that they needed to stop making everything about Ezra’s sight.  He was right; it wasn’t good for anybody.  It would do them all – and Ezra especially – good to remember that there were other things happening.  He had probably been trapped inside his own thoughts for too long.

“So, when were you thinking?” he asked.

She shrugged.  “How about tonight?”

Kanan frowned.  “Don’t you think that’s a little soon?”

“Everyone’s got to eat anyway, why not do it together?  It doesn’t have to be a special meal or anything, in fact it’s better if it isn’t.  I don’t want people to start thinking it has to be an occasion for us to get together.  We’ll take a few servings of whatever they’re making in the commissary, and eat here on the Ghost.”  Well, as long as it wasn’t a repeat of the ridiculously hot chili she’d heard about, but thankfully missed out on, a week or so back.

“Okay, sure,” Kanan agreed.  “Sounds good.”

Hera smiled.  “Know what would sound even better?” she asked.  “If you made dessert.  Nothing fancy, I just realized how long it’s been since I tasted those flatcakes you used to make.  We have plenty of syrup to have with them, assuming Zeb hasn’t decided to use it all on his waffle stash.”

“Come to think of it, I did smell waffles last night,” Kanan mused.  “When I was heading to your quarters.  But sure, if we have everything we need, I don’t mind making them.  Only…” he hesitated and she felt him tense a little beside her.

“What?”

“Nothing.”  He shook his head.  “Well, something… This’ll be the first time I tried to make them since losing my sight.  I don’t know… I’m not sure, it’ll probably be fine, but I might need some help.”

Hera pursed her lips.  She hadn’t thought of that, but of course Kanan was right, the last time they had eaten flatcakes had been for breakfast not long before he had gone to Malachor with Ezra and Ahsoka.  Another meal that hadn’t been an occasion, back when it really hadn’t.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to,” she told him.  “Maybe it’d be better to try it for the first time sometime when Ezra isn’t there.”  She didn’t mean to imply he wouldn’t be able to do it, it was just that  _if_  he ran into a problem, that might not be helpful for Ezra.

Kanan shook his head, half a laugh escaping from his lips.  “No, it’s fine.  It’s good, actually.  And even if they don’t go perfectly, it’ll show him that’s not the end of the world, and that needing help isn’t something to be ashamed of.  It might end up being a good teaching experience.”

“I thought you didn’t want everything to be about that,” Hera said.

“I don’t.  But this isn’t everything, it’s one thing that may or may not come up.  We don’t have to avoid it either, just make it something we can talk about without it becoming some huge thing.”

That was going to be easier said than done.  Kanan might be able to sense Ezra’s emotions through the Force, but she had seen Ezra’s face every single time the subject came up, and she could see exactly how huge a thing it was to him.  It was going to take a lot of work and a lot of time to change that.  But Kanan was right, they needed to try.

“If it comes up,” she agreed.

Kanan sighed.  “Talking of Ezra, I’m going to have to start to think seriously about these lessons,” he said.  “Honestly, I never really had a plan before, not for teaching him about the Force; I never needed one.  He just seemed to pick up whatever I taught him so easily I just made it up as I went.  The only thing I really had to work to do the right way was lightsaber technique.  This is going to be different.”

She nodded; it was different, but it was also the same.  “Remember, you don’t have to plan everything now, though,” she reminded him.  “Have an idea what’s coming next, what order you’re going to teach things in, maybe have an alternative plan you can move to in case something isn’t working, but mostly you just need to know what you’re doing today.  Or maybe for the next few lessons if you want to start laying groundwork early.  You don’t need to plan  _everything_  now.”

“I know,” Kanan told her.  “And I do have an idea what we’re going to do today, I just need to build on it a little.”

“Would it help to talk it through?” she asked.  They had used to do that when Ezra had first joined them, those times when Kanan had been unsure where to go next; how to teach something he barely remembered learning.  She hadn’t had a lot to add, of course; that was Kanan’s world and she couldn’t possibly understand it like he did.  He had tried in the past to explain what the Force was like, and he simply hadn’t had the words to make someone understand that couldn’t experience it for themself.  It had still seemed to help just to have someone to talk to.

Kanan shook his head.  For a moment she took it as a rejection, until he replied.  “I never thought I was going to have to teach this.  I thought maybe, one day, it might come up just as some interesting trick or… I don’t know.  Something to teach him when he already knew it all.  I never thought he’d  _need_  it like this.  I keep thinking, what if I can’t teach it?  What if I do it wrong and I end up scaring him even more than he already is?”

Hera pulled away a little and turned to face him.  She placed a hand on each of his shoulders.  “You’re going to do great,” she promised.  “You said something similar once about teaching him  _anything at all_  and look how well that turned out.  He’s going to be fine, and if you make a mistake, well… it happens.  You don’t have a choice here, not like you did when you decided to train him to be a Jedi.  The alternative then was that you didn’t train him and he went back to his life as it was.  The alternative here is just to watch him go blind and let him figure things out on his own.”

He shook his head again, “Obviously I’m not considering doing that.”

“Then you do your best, and if anything goes wrong we’ll deal with it.  Why don’t you tell me what you have planned for today?”

Kanan sighed.  “When we talked yesterday, he said the thing that’s worrying him the most right now is being able to get around, knowing where he is, where other things and places are.  I want to start with that.  But it’s such a huge topic, there’s no way we can cover everything in one afternoon.  It’s going to take months.  Maybe more.”

“So start small,” Hera suggested.  “What’s the first thing you learned?”

“My quarters,” he said.  “I pretty much didn’t leave for weeks on end, by the time I did, I was very well acquainted with exactly where everything was.  That, and the route from there to the ‘fresher, I guess.  But the layout of his own quarters is something he can learn by himself.  I’m thinking of starting off with something a little more general, something he can use wherever he might be.  Sensing objects, knowing where things are, noticing something in his way, that kind of thing.”

Hera nodded.  It sounded like a good place to start.

“He’s done it before,” Kanan added.  “He’s been practicing a technique he made up himself, he actually told me about it once, and it works.  It’s just… not the best way.  It only gives him an idea of what’s directly in front of him, and it takes a lot of concentration.  What I do gives me a more general idea of what’s around me, then I can concentrate on a particular area if I need to.  He’s done that before, too, in a way.  The planet where we picked up Rex; remember I told you about the dust storm?  I directed where we needed to go, Ezra manned the gun and took out an Imperial walker.”

“I remember you telling me about it,” she said.

“He and I were the only ones that could see out there,” Kanan laughed softly.  “Still would be, if it happened again.  Ironic, right?”

Something twisted inside her, and although she smiled, and she had to admit it was good that Kanan could laugh about it, she couldn’t get herself there.  Not yet.  “So, walking around,” she said, going back to the lesson plan.  “How are you going to do that?”

He shrugged.  “I can only go by my own experience, but it worked, so I’m thinking learn by doing.  I’ll set up a few obstacles in the cargo bay, and…” he broke off and sighed.

“What is it?”

“Nothing, just… Ezra doesn’t react well to blindfolds.  Or to being in the dark, or, well, to anything that means he can’t see.  I could ask him to close his eyes, that way he’s more in control, but honestly I don’t think he’s going to be able to resist opening them to see how he’s doing, and that’s not going to help.”

The day before, in the Phantom, she had seen for herself exactly how Ezra reacted to darkness.  She shouldn’t have done that.  She had been trying to prove a point, and she had done so, possibly too effectively.  She had turned the lights out on him once before too, during their tour of the Ghost, while she had been blindfolded and attempting to show him that it was possible to get around the ship without sight, even without being able to rely on the Force.  Both times, he had reacted badly.  Of course, both times it had been unexpected.

“Maybe if he was ready for it, it wouldn’t be so bad,” she suggested.  “Or maybe he has more self control than you think and he  _could_  keep his eyes closed.”

Kanan shook his head and smiled like there was something funny about that.  “I don’t think so,” he said.  “He’s been reacting badly to the idea of a blindfold since long before I knew what was going on with him, it never mattered if he knew it was coming or I sprung it on him.  And self control?  He has plenty of that, but so do I, and I know  _I’d_  have peeked if it was possible.”

Of course, Kanan’s situation had been different.  Knowing you  _can’t_  look and wanting to wasn’t the same as knowing that you could, and resisting.  But he was right, Ezra might sneak a peak, and that wouldn’t be helpful.  Of course, he could lift a blindfold almost as easily, but to do that would take conscious thought, while he might open his eyes before he even realized what he was doing.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked.

Kanan shrugged.  “I’m going to have to help him get over the blindfold thing.  I have a few ideas, whether or not they’ll work though, that depends on him.”

It had to work.  The syndrome wasn’t going to slow down because Ezra wasn’t ready for it.  Sooner or later, he was going to find himself unable to see whether he was blindfolded or not.

“There’s another thing I’m considering,” Kanan added.  “Not yet, but maybe soon, depending how he gets on with what I try to teach him.  Have you noticed he’s already started avoiding going out at night?”

Hera frowned.  She hadn’t noticed.  If that was happening, it was the kind of thing she  _should_  have noticed.  “I thought he was still going to the dokma races most nights,” she said.  Although, she had noticed, and didn’t know whether it was due to Ezra, that the lighting around the racetrack, and certain other parts of the base, had been improved recently.

“He is,” Kanan agreed.  “But you have lights on main parts of the base, and I assume the guys running the races have rigged them up over there too.  I was out with him a little further away, and he was having trouble.  And it’s only going to get worse.  Granted, I haven’t seen the lighting around here, but if it’s like I’m imagining, there’s going to be gaps, places that are darker than others?”

Honestly, she wasn’t sure.  Not without going out there at night and looking at it, but the distances between the points of illumination meant it was almost a certainty that there would be areas darker than others.

Why had Kanan, who hadn’t even seen it for himself, thought of that when she hadn’t?

“So what do you suggest?” she asked.  “Double the number of lights? Someone already made it brighter, somehow.  Did you have something to do with that?”

“No,” Kanan told her, “but that’s good.  No, I didn’t mean you should do anything to the lights.  I’m just thinking, if he doesn’t take to using the Force to sense his environment, there is something else he could use.  Temporarily, of course.  It’d be helpful, I just don’t know how he’d feel about it.”

Hera thought about it, but whatever it was that Kanan was thinking of, however obvious it was to him, she didn’t follow.  “What?” she asked.

“Remember about a week or so after I got back from Malachor, you gave me something…”

A cane.  She had given him a cane, and he had hated it.  He hadn’t  _said_  that, of course, but she had been able to tell.  She remembered the way he had held it awkwardly, and tried to smile at her as he had thanked her, and how she had seen it standing in the corner of his room unused for days after.  He had even tried it once or twice before it had disappeared, and when she asked about it, he had told her it had broken.  When she had offered to replace it, he had turned her down.

Honestly, she thought Ezra might react in the same way as Kanan had, or possibly worse.  Ezra wore his emotions a little closer to the surface than Kanan, and he’d had a hard enough time accepting that people even knew there was a problem with his sight.  That wasn’t surprising, not after he had kept the secret to himself for so long, but it made her doubt that he would be comfortable using something that so clearly advertised it.  It would take time to get him there.  On the other hand, it had to be preferable to being led around the base.

Ezra being Ezra, though, she could easily imagine him choosing neither of those options and staying on the Ghost after nightfall, no matter how badly he might want to be elsewhere.

“He picked up almost everything else you taught him easily enough,” she said.  “You said yourself what a quick study he was.  Why assume this will be any different?”

“Because it  _is_  different,” he told her.  “It’s… I don’t know how to explain it.  It’s like, imagine learning something how to do something, then finding out that you have to go back to the beginning and figure out a  _new_  way to do it, but with both hands tied behind your back.  Or blindfolded, I guess.”  He paused, then frowned.  “That sounded better in my head.”

That was good, because to her it had sounded awkward and confusing.  She just hoped that if Kanan even needed to say whatever he was trying to articulate to Ezra, he would do better.

Kanan let out a frustrated sigh.  “The point is, this isn’t the same as anything we’ve done before.  Even the times I’ve asked him to hit a target with a lightsaber without looking, it’s different when it’s…” he hesitated, appearing to falter slightly, and for a moment she thought he was going to stop.  “It’s different when it’s just… everyday life.  It feels different.  Hopefully he’ll take to it quickly, but honestly I think he’s going to resist my attempts to teach him, even if he doesn’t realize he’s doing it.”

Hera frowned.  She hoped Kanan was wrong, but feared he was probably right.  “If you want me to try and get hold of another cane, I will.  It didn’t help you much though.”

“Yeah… but it probably would have, if I’d given it more of a chance,” Kanan told her.  “But no, don’t worry about getting another one for now, I’ll wait and see how things go.  It’s something to think about, though.  And it’s something that doesn’t involve the Force.  He’s going to have to get used to the idea that not everything he needs to know is about that.  I talked about it with him a little already, but I think the sooner it comes up in practice the better.”

That was probably right.  The sooner  _everything_  came up the better.  Honestly, Hera didn’t know how much of what Kanan did relied on the Force and how much involved more conventional methods; she had never really thought about it before.  The important thing was that it worked for him.  She hadn’t wanted to make him uncomfortable by asking too many questions too early, but maybe it was something they should talk about now.

“He’s not going to like that,” Kanan added.  “When he realized how much of what I do is just regular stuff similar to what his aunt would have done… he knows it, but I don’t think it’s sunk in yet.  He’s still thinking he can ‘see’ with the Force.  He said as much just now, did you notice?”

She hadn’t.  She thought back through everything Ezra had said to them during their brief conversation, but whatever it was that Kanan had picked up on hadn’t stuck in her mind.  “No, I didn’t notice anything,” she said.

Kanan leaned forward, resting his arms on the table.  “Good, maybe I’m misinterpreting the whole thing,” he said, “but when he talks about ‘seeing’ with the Force, I think he still half-believes the Force is going to somehow put images in his head.  It won’t.  I wish it would do that for him, but it’s more about piecing together what you can hear and sense and… it’s nothing like seeing.”

She touched his arm gently, an attempt to reassure him.  “I know.  And I think he knows that too.  Why do you think he’s so afraid of the dark suddenly?  But you can’t blame him for trying to hold on to some hope, if that is what he’s doing.  Just start to teach him what he needs to know, and he’ll figure the rest out for himself.”

Kanan sucked in a deep breath.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Maybe you’re right.”  He exhaled as he stood up decisively.  “Okay then, if you want flatcakes, you’re going to need to help me check we have all the ingredients.”

He held out a hand to her invitingly.  Hera didn’t need the help, of course, but she took it as she got to her feet.


	5. Chapter 5

Walking slowly to the cargo bay, Kanan took a deep breath and reached out into the Force to centre himself.  This was just another lesson.  It wasn’t anything unusual, it wasn’t anything to be nervous about.  He and Ezra and been training together for years, and today was no different. **  
**

Yet he found himself as full of self-doubt as he had been the first time he had tried to teach Ezra anything at all, when he had been convinced that he would never be good enough to teach, when he had still believed that he might have made a mistake by taking on a student.

He knew now that wasn’t true.  Deciding to teach Ezra had been one of the best decisions he had ever made.

This was different though.  This wasn’t a Force lesson, and he could tell himself all day that it was, that didn’t change the fact that he was lying to himself.  It was different, because he had meticulously planned it out in a way he never had before.  It was different because he had decided not only what he wanted to teach, but two alternate plans depending on how Ezra reacted.  It was different because he had a target in mind, not only for where he wanted Ezra to be years from now, but also a series of targets for a month, two months, six months from in the future.  He knew the course the lessons should take.

It was different because not everything he would be teaching involved using the Force.

It was different because this was their first real, properly scheduled lesson in the skills that Ezra would need in order to cope without his sight.  That was significant; he felt it, and he knew that Ezra would feel it too.

The closer he came to the cargo bay, the more aware he became of Ezra’s presence.  He had already known Ezra was close by; a vague sense of proximity lurking at the edge of his awareness as it always did, but as Kanan stood outside the door, he realized that Ezra was already inside, waiting for him.

Ezra was early.  That was unexpected.  In fact, Kanan had half expected him not to show up at all, and to have to spend the first half of what should have been the lesson tracking him down, only for Ezra to claim something important had come up, or he had forgotten.  In some ways, that would have been a relief; a brief reprieve from an unpleasant task.  As much as he knew Ezra needed this, and as much as he was prepared to teach him and wanted him to succeed, he didn’t want to have to teach it.  He didn’t want it to be a thing that Ezra needed to know.

Of course, that was ridiculous.  Ezra  _did_  need to know, and would need it more and more as time went on.  Pretending otherwise would only lead to further delays and more problems later.  It wasn’t fair to Ezra.  Not only that, but as Kanan had said himself to Hera earlier that day, with Ezra’s talent for connections, it wasn’t hard to imagine him picking up on feelings like that, and that wasn’t going to help him one bit.

People feeling bad for you was never useful.  Not for you, but not for them either, and he thought that Ezra had probably worked that out that already.  Probably a long time before any of  _this_  stuff happened.

He took another deep breath.  Ezra didn’t appear to have noticed his presence lurking outside the room.  That made sense; although Ezra was completely capable of sensing a Force-presence, and if it was somebody he knew well, sometimes even identifying them, he didn’t have the practice that Kanan did, and he didn’t keep his awareness open all the time.  If he decided to search for Kanan he would almost definitely know that he was nearby, but he might not be able to tell any more than that.  Not yet.

That was something else they were going to have to work on eventually. 

Kanan reached out and touched the door control.  As the door slid open, he sensed Ezra’s surprise and heard him leap to his feet.

“Kanan,” Ezra said.  He paused, then cleared his throat.  “What are you doing here?”

Kanan frowned.  That wasn’t the reaction he had been expecting.  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was sure we’d arranged a lesson around now,” he said.  “Isn’t that why you’re here too?”

“No.  Well, I mean  _yes_ , but…” Ezra faltered, gave up and let out a frustrated sigh.  Kanan imagined him frown and shake his head, but he couldn’t say for certain whether he had actually done either of those things.  “You’re early,” Ezra said eventually.

Kanan nodded.  Ezra wasn’t wrong.  “So are you,” he pointed out.

“Yeah.  Well.  I didn’t have anything else to do.  The commissary was busy and I didn’t feel like company, then Zeb was in our quarters and Sabine was in the lounge, so…” He let the words fall away, leaving Kanan to draw his own conclusions.

The crinkling of an energy bar wrapper being pushed into Ezra’s pocket told Kanan everything he needed to know about Ezra’s choice of lunch.  Now wasn’t the time for a lecture, but he had to say something.

“Sometimes, when you don’t feel like company, being with other people is actually the best thing you can do,” he said.  “Anyway, we’re supposed to be cutting back on ration bar usage, remember? Once in a while is fine, but they’re supposed to be for emergencies, if there ever comes a time when we can’t get fresh food.  When there’s food available, we should be eating that.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ezra said.  The wrapper crinkled again as his fingers brushed against it inside his pocket.  “Bad day, I guess.”

Kanan could understand that.  He could understand not wanting company, but he also knew that it was better to fight the urge to hide away.  He also understood how difficult that could be.

Ezra was nervous.  Kanan could sense it through the Force, but he was also aware of it in the way that he was moving around, taking a few steps in one direction before turning and walking back again, shifting his weight from one foot to another, tapping his feet on the floor, running his hands through his hair.  It was as though he couldn’t bring himself to keep still.

“Relax,” Kanan told him, knowing full-well how unhelpful that would be.  “It’s not going to be that bad, I promise.”

Ezra stopped abruptly, mid step.  The sudden silence in the room was jarring.  “What’s not?” he asked, his voice quiet but curious.  “The lesson, or the whole ‘going blind’ thing?”

“I…” Kanan blinked, taken aback by the almost casual way Ezra asked the question.  He could feel the tension beneath the words, but couldn’t hear it in Ezra’s voice.  If he hadn’t been paying attention, he could almost have believed Ezra was trying to make a joke.  Maybe he  _was_  trying.  “Both, I suppose,” he replied.  “But I was talking about the lesson.”

“Right,” Ezra said dully.  The pacing resumed, then stopped again after a few steps, putting Ezra directly front of him.  “So, about the lesson…”

Yes, about that.  Kanan turned around and gestured to the storage crate at the edge of the room, where Ezra had been sitting before Kanan had walked in and surprised him.  “I’m here early because I wanted to see if the place needed setting up,” he explained, in response to Ezra’s earlier comment.  “I was going to make sure we had a clear space, maybe move some things around if not.”

Ezra followed Kanan’s gesture and sat down on the crate.  Kanan sat next to him.  “Well, you don’t have to bother,” Ezra told him.  “It’s all pretty clear already, most of this stuff is over here by the edge of the…” he stopped, and let out a small sigh.  “You know that already,” he said.

Kanan did know that.  He was right there in the room.  He tried not to feel the stab of irritation that hit him at the unnecessary information.  “I know that,” he confirmed.

For a moment, Ezra sank into silence, then exhaled slowly.  He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, broadcasting awkward embarrassment.  “Sorry,” he said, and Kanan could hear the wince in his voice.

“Don’t worry about it.” Kanan clapped a hand to his back.  He didn’t bother to deny that anything was wrong, it was still frustrating when people ‘helped’ when they didn’t need to; it probably always would be, but he knew that Ezra hadn’t meant anything by it.  Sure, he probably wouldn’t have provided the same information to Hera, or Zeb, or anybody else that could see, but it had been a momentary lapse.  Ezra of all people knew that Kanan could sense the space, that was why he was here: for a lesson in how to do the same thing himself.

And on that thought, they should begin.

Kanan took a breath to center himself.  “Ready?” he asked.

His hand, still on Ezra’s back, felt the movement as Ezra tensed.  “But we’re early,” he said.

That was true.  Not as early as they had been, but still a little earlier than planned.  But he doubted that waiting until the allotted time was going to help anything.  “We could wait around for a few minutes, maybe think of something to do to pass the time,” he suggested.  “How about we play ‘I spy’?”

He could feel Ezra’s cringe reaction, and wondered whether that had been a push too far.  “You’re   _not_  funny,” Ezra told him.

Kanan nodded.  “I know.  Sorry.”  Although, now he thought of it, a game like that might work, a little further down the line.  It could make an effective training tool.

Ezra forced out a frustrated sigh.  “Okay, fine,” he said.  “You’re right, there’s no point waiting.  What are we going to do?”

Hesitantly, Kanan touched the outside of his pocket that contained the blindfold, the same one that he had offered to Ezra not so long ago, back before he had known for sure what was happening, when he was still hoping that he was wrong.  Ezra didn’t miss the gesture, and Kanan felt him bristle again next to him.

“You’re going to pull a blindfold out of there, aren’t you?”

Kanan felt Ezra’s anxiety spike at the idea, overriding everything else that he could sense from him.  Kanan gave him a moment to get the emotion under control before he nodded.  “I was thinking about it, yeah.”

Ezra took a few deep breaths, the third one escaped as an almost hysterical burst of laughter.  “You’re so predictable,” he said.

He couldn’t argue with that, so instead he reached into his pocket and took out the strip of cloth.  He didn’t offer it to Ezra yet, instead he placed it on his own knee and turned to face him.  He sensed Ezra’s anxiety begin to rise again.

“Doing okay?” Kanan asked.

“Yeah, of course.”

Again, Ezra’s tone of voice didn’t match what Kanan was sensing from him.  He was pretending effectively enough that anybody else might genuinely believe him; only Kanan’s connection to the Force, and the fact that he knew Ezra better than that, told him it was a lie.

He waited, making sure it wasn’t going to get too bad.  When the panic ceased rising and leveled out, he picked up the blindfold and held it out to him.  “Good,” he said.  “Ready?”

Ezra didn’t take it.  Instead, he hovered on the edge of reacting, reaching out his hand but not actually grabbing the thing.  Kanan moved it a little closer, and felt it brush the tips of Ezra’s fingers; Ezra pulled them away like it burned.

“Put it on,” Kanan told him, a little less gently than he had intended.

Ezra hesitated for a few seconds longer before his hand closed around the blindfold and he took it from Kanan.  Kanan waited, feeling the air currents in the room shifting as Ezra moved to tie the cloth around his eyes.  When he was done, Ezra didn’t speak, he sat there still and silent, waiting.

“Still doing okay?” Kanan asked him.

A pause, a breath, then, “Yeah.”

Ezra’s voice shook just slightly this time.  He wasn’t okay, but that was alright.  He was going to have time to get there.

Kanan nodded.  “So, first things first.  Not every lesson is going to be like this.”

“Like what?”

He understood Ezra’s confusion; they hadn’t actually done anything yet.  “What I mean is, we need to keep up your regular training schedule too.  We’ve slipped on that lately, and we can’t let that happen.  It’s important to learn the skills you’re going to need as your sight gets worse, but also it’s important to not make everything about that, because not everything  _is_  about it.”

He heard Ezra’s fingers playing with the fabric of the blindfold; not removing it, simply fidgeting with it.  “Coulda fooled me,” he said quietly.

Kanan sighed.  “Well, that’s the problem.  You need to get out of that mindset, and that’s not easy.  At the same time, we do need to start to work on compensation techniques; we can’t  _ignore_  what’s happening.”

“I don’t want to ignore it,” Ezra said.  His voice dropped to almost a whisper.  “Not anymore.”

“And we won’t.”  Kanan placed a hand on Ezra’s shoulder and allowed it to rest there.  “But before we can do anything, you need to get over this thing you have about wearing a blindfold, okay?”

Through his hand on Ezra’s shoulder, he felt him move, as Ezra turned to face him, as though he could look at him, realized that he couldn’t, and turned back to face forward.

“What I mean is,” Kanan clarified, “it makes you anxious, and that anxiety is going to distract you; you’ll find yourself concentrating on that instead of on what you’re supposed to be learning.  I’m not saying you need to enjoy it, I know that’s not going to happen, but you need to be okay with it.  Okay?”

Ezra touched the blindfold again, his fingernails making a sound as they scratched on the woven surface.  “Easier said than done,” he said.  “But yeah, I get it.  You know, it’s not actually the blindfold that bothers me, though…”

Kanan did know that; it wasn’t the blindfold itself, it was what it represented.  It was an inability to see, it was the thought of a future where he would open his eyes and see nothing, or nothing useful.  It was that claustrophobic feeling of rising panic, of being trapped, helpless, unable to do anything, unable to take off the thing blocking his vision, because even if he did remove the bandage it wouldn’t make any difference, there would still be no sight…

It was an uncomfortable memory for Kanan, but for Ezra it was a future, one constructed from his own fears and his memories of watching Kanan.  And one that Kanan was going to ensure never happened.

“I know,” he said, “it’s not being able to see, and you’re right, that is scary at first.”

Ezra made a small sound, as though he was about to protest but thought better of it.

“But it’s going to happen,” Kanan continued, not trying to censor what he was saying for the sake of Ezra’s feelings.  It  _was_  going to happen, and there was no way around that.  Skirting the edge of the subject wasn’t going to help.  “So you have two options; deal with it now, or deal with it later.  Now will be easier, in the long run.”

Ezra didn’t reply.  That was okay, Kanan hadn’t really expected him to.

“So that’s what this time is for,” Kanan continued.  “We’re going to sit and talk, and you’re going to get used to doing that without seeing me.  After this, we need to move forward and you’re going to get used to doing other things too.  I can’t keep protecting your feelings.”

He hesitated.  He hadn’t exactly been protecting Ezra’s feelings yesterday either, but they had already dealt with that, and he didn’t want to bring it up again.  That had been Kanan telling Ezra about his own experiences, not trying to get him ready for experiences of his own.

“What I’m saying is that if we’re going to get anywhere with this, you need to be able to do as I ask, and you need to have your mind on the task.”

Ezra sighed.  “Yeah.” He shifted his position on the crate slightly, edging away from Kanan, who allowed his hand to drop back down to his side.  “So what ‘task’ is it going to be?”

Kanan shook his head.  “That doesn’t matter yet, don’t worry about it.  Right now, the task is just to talk.  Why don’t you tell me what you did today?  Why did you say it was a bad day?”

Ezra sighed; not in a frustrated way, more like he was simply filling time to put off speaking.  He fidgeted, turning his head as though to look around the room, and finding himself unable.  His hands went instantly to the blindfold covering his face.  He didn’t remove it or lift it to peer underneath, Kanan would have felt his sense of relief if he had.

Kanan reached across, took hold of Ezra’s hands and lowered them to his lap.  “There’s nobody else here,” he promised him.

“I know.”

He did, too.  There had been nobody in the room before Kanan had entered, and Ezra would have heard if anybody had opened to door since he had put on the blindfold.  Still, that was what was worrying him, Kanan was sure of it, that was why he kept trying to look around.  “Reach out with the Force if you want to make sure,” he said.  “Even if you can’t pinpoint somebody’s exact location yet, you’d be able to tell if they were listening in.”

“I know that,” Ezra insisted.  He raised a hand to his face again, but instead of touching the blindfold, this time he ran his fingers through his hair and then dropped the hand back down to his lap.  “I  _know_  that.”

“Good.  So, what did you do today, after you left Hera and I?  Did you try meditation again?”

“I didn’t do anything, okay?” Ezra said, his voice full of irritation.  “I just went back to my room until Zeb turned up.  I didn’t feel like going out.  It’s not a  _bad_  bad day, it’s just one where I didn’t feel like talking, or being stared at in the commissary.”

Kanan nodded.  “Okay,” he said, and let the subject drop.  That probably was all it was.  Ezra didn’t appear to be hiding anything, and now wasn’t the time to push the issue.  “What do  _you_  want to talk about?”

“I don’t know,” Ezra said.  “How about what you’re going to make me do today.  And the other days.  I get it, you can’t protect my feelings or whatever, but what does that actually  _mean_? You’re not going to make me walk around the base in this thing, are you?”

“Not today,” Kanan told him.

Silence, as Ezra felt the implication behind that.  Of course, he knew he was going to have to go outside and be around other people eventually, but it, like so many other things, was probably something that he was trying not to think about.

“Not until you’re ready,” Kanan clarified.  “But, you know it’s a thing we’re going to have to do, right? You’ll need to know how to find your your way around the Ghost, and the base, and even places that you’ve never seen, that you don’t have a visual reference for.  But we’ll build up to it, you have the time to do that.”

“Time…” Ezra repeated softly, disbelievingly.  It was a difference in perception, Kanan knew.  From Kanan’s point of view, Ezra had the luxury of time that he had never had.  He could prepare, he could get himself ready, and his sight was worsening slowly, almost as though it was easing him into blindness.  It was tough sometimes to remember that from Ezra’s perspective, the years of sight ahead were frighteningly short and growing shorter every day.

That was a perspective that Kanan desperately wished he could change, but that he suspected he would not be able to.  The only thing that would do that was time, and in a few years when things were very different, Ezra might look back on this time and realize the gift that it had been.

If they survived that long, of course.

“Yes,” Kanan told him.  “Time.  Time to learn how to explore places before you  _need_  to be able to do it.  Well, unless…” Kanan smiled, and made sure it was audible in his voice; hopefully Ezra would pick up on it and realize it was an attempt at a joke.  “Unless you’re planning on confining yourself to your quarters, that is.  In which case you won’t need to know how to get around out there.  That’d make my job a lot easier.”

“Funny,” Ezra said, without a hint of humor, then added unnecessarily, “I’m not going to do that.”

Good.  It was more or less the response he had expected, but it was a relief to hear Ezra say it out loud.  “That’s too bad,” he said.  “I was hoping for an easy life.”

Ezra laughed; a short but genuine burst that stopped so quickly that Kanan almost wondered whether he had imagined it.  “Easy life?  Never going to happen.”

Well, he probably wasn’t wrong.  Still, at least they seemed to have managed to lighten the mood a little.

“So, what  _will_  we be doing today?” Ezra asked.

Kanan shrugged.  “We’re going to start by working on moving around,” he said.  “Inside; in here.  It was one of your ‘big things’, remember?”

Of course Ezra remembered it.  It would have been obvious even if Ezra hadn’t told him, that that was his big fear; the one thing that was preying on his mind more than anything else, and the thing that had tripped him up – in some cases literally – already.  There would be so much more that he would need to know, but it was easy to see why that would worry him the most at this stage.  It was one of the things that Kanan had found the most daunting too, at first.

“There’s a lot to cover,” Kanan continued.  “You’re right, it is a big topic.  But we’re going to start small, and then dip in and out of it from time to time, look at other things in the meantime, and make sure we have at least a few sessions a week that have nothing to do with blindness, okay?”

Ezra didn’t reply.

“Still doing okay?”

“Yeah…”

“For now, all we’re going to do is practise walking around the cargo bay.  No obstacles, nothing to worry about, just get used to the feeling of moving around.  I’m guessing it’s not something you have a lot of experience of, right?”

Ezra tensed slightly again, no doubt remembering some incident or another that he would rather forget.  “I have some,” he said.

“And how did it go?”

For a moment, he didn’t think Ezra was going to reply, then, “Uh… pretty bad.  It was before… before you knew.  Before you… when you could see.”

Kanan winced; before anybody else had known, when Ezra had thought he was completely alone in this.  He imagined Ezra facing an uncertain future alone, unable to bring himself to tell anybody.

If Ezra  _had_  told him then, what would they have done?  The truth was, he wasn’t sure.  He would have done whatever he could to help him, of course, but he didn’t know how much help he would have been.  There had been blind Jedi before, but Kanan had never known how they did what they did, he had never had the opportunity to ask them.  The knowledge hadn’t been in the holocron, he had checked.

He would have tried to help, and he would have failed.  Only learning how to do those things for himself had prepared him to teach these lessons.  Just as, he suspected, the Force had planned it.

“Why don’t you tell me how it went?” he said.

Ezra took a breath.  “Do I have to?” he asked.  Then, without waiting for a reply, continued.  “It went badly; I hurt my leg.  I didn’t try it again until I had no choice; that night with the dokma.  That didn’t go so great either.”

That night, he and Ezra had spent too long away from the base, Kanan meditating while Ezra attempted to find out what had caused the sudden influx of dokma onto the base.  The sun had gone down, and Ezra had refused to admit that he needed help to get back to base through a maze of moving creatures.

“That night there were obstacles to avoid.  It sounds like there were when you tried it on your own too, right?”

Ezra shrugged.  “There wasn’t  _supposed_ to be.  I guess I got turned around.”  He hesitated.  “I don’t remember, it was a long time ago.”

That was a lie.  Kanan was certain that Ezra remembered whatever incident he was thinking about vividly.  He let it go; this wasn’t the time to argue about something irrelevant.  “This will be different.  It’s an empty room, I’ll warn you if there’s anything in your way, or if you’re approaching the wall.  I just want you to start off by moving around.  Anywhere you like.  Just walk around the room.”

Ezra shifted his position on the crate.  “Just walk around?” he repeated.  “Don’t use the Force for anything?”

“Not yet,” Kanan confirmed.  “This is still about getting used to the blindfold.  You don’t have to sit and talk if you don’t want to, that’s fine; we’ll move onto the next thing.”

Ezra stood, but didn’t move, as though his feet were rooted to the spot.  “Maybe sitting and talking isn’t such a bad thing,” he said.  “Hey, so… what did  _you_  do the rest of the day?”

“Made flatcakes,” Kanan told him.

He heard Ezra’s feet on the ground as he turned toward him questioningly.  “What?  Really?”

Clearly, that hadn’t been the answer Ezra had been expecting, and the anxiety dropped away, replaced by surprise and confusion.  Kanan smiled to himself.  “Yeah.  Hera and I mixed up a batch of batter together, and I made two to practise.  They came out pretty well.”

“Why would you need to practise?” Ezra asked.

Kanan hesitated.  Obviously, Ezra had seen him make the cakes before.  Just as obviously, he wasn’t thinking about when it had been; that Kanan had been able to see.  He knew he should tell him, but something stopped him.  For the first time in possibly a long time, Ezra wasn’t thinking about sight, and blindness.  Even while wearing the blindfold, he wasn’t thinking about the fact that he couldn’t see; he was talking to Kanan about something that was, as far as he knew, completely unrelated.

Kanan didn’t want to ruin that.  Even if they would soon be moving on with the lesson and Ezra would have no choice but to think about those things again, even a short break was important.

“It’s for dinner tonight,” he said, not ignoring the question, just choosing to interpret it a little differently.  “I was supposed to mention earlier.  Hera thought it would be good to get us all together.”

He sensed an unexpected burst of apprehension from Ezra.  “Why?” he asked.

“No reason.  It’s just been a while since we did that.  She…  _we_  thought it would do everybody good.”

Ezra hesitated.  “Just dinner?” he asked.  

Kanan almost asked what else it might be, but thought better of it.  Hera wouldn’t use the opportunity to spring anything on them, it wasn’t her way.  But he could see why Ezra might wonder.  Obviously, his mind had gone right back to his situation despite Kanan’s efforts.  “Just dinner,” he confirmed.

“I don’t…” Ezra paused.  “Do we have to?”

“It’s not compulsory, if that’s what you mean,” Kanan assured him.  “But it would be nice if everyone was there.”

He was still sensing uncertainty from Ezra, and hearing it in the way his feet shuffled a little on the floor of the cargo bay.  Something was bothering him about the idea, and Kanan had a good idea what it was.  “Nobody’s going to be asking you awkward questions, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Kanan said.  “We’re not going to outlaw talking about your sight, but the point is to give everyone a break; the chance to talk about  _other_  things.  

A pause, then, “I wasn’t worried about that.  But hey, it’s great  _you guys_ ’ll all get to have a break from it.”

“That’s not what I…” Kanan resisted the urge to put his head in his hands.  “That was badly phrased.  Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Ezra said.  It wasn’t.  “You’re not going to  _tell_  everyone not to talk about that, right?  Because you know if you do, it’ll be all anyone can think of, and we’d all end up sitting there in silence.”

Kanan shook his head, “I’m not going to tell anybody what they can or can’t talk about,” he promised.

Ezra relaxed briefly, but the tension returned quickly.  “But if you don’t tell them, they won’t know not to ask about it.”

There was no way to win this conversation.  The worst part was, Kanan knew exactly where Ezra was coming from, and six months earlier he would have said the exact same things, if he hadn’t simply chosen not to accept the invitation.

This was getting nowhere.  “Okay,” he said, “I think that’s enough talking.”

On the plus side, Ezra was worrying about something other than the blindfold now.  That hadn’t been how Kanan had been hoping this would work out, but thinking about it now, it was probably the best he could have hoped for.  Ezra wasn’t comfortable with it yet, but Kanan hadn’t expected him to be – that would take much longer – but at least he appeared to have almost gotten used to it.  It was a start.  Of course, so far all Ezra had done was sit, and stand still.

“Dinner’s at seven,” he added.  “It’s nothing special, they’re serving some kind of stew in the commissary, we’re just going to bring a few portions back.  You don’t have to come, but I hope you do.  You’re right, I can’t guarantee what people are going to say, but I can promise that nobody will be be wanting to make you uncomfortable.  And if you don’t want to talk about something, just remember you don’t have to.”

“I know that,” Ezra said.  He probably did, too, but Kanan knew how difficult it could be to change the subject without drawing more attention to it.

“I can also guarantee that if you don’t come, you won’t get any flatcakes,” Kanan added.

Ezra didn’t laugh.  Kanan hadn’t really expected him to, but some acknowledgement of the joke would have been nice.  Not that it was a joke, of course; there really wouldn’t be any leftovers.

Kanan got to his feet and placed a hand on Ezra’s shoulder.  “Okay,” he said.  “Ready to get started?”

Ezra shuffled his feet a little, and Kanan could feel his discomfort rising again.  He took a deep breath, obviously designed to calm himself.  Yeah, I guess so.”

Kanan allowed his hand to drop from Ezra’s shoulder and he took a step backward, allowing him some space.  “Okay,” he said.  “Whenever you’re ready.”

“So just… walk around?” Ezra asked.  He remained where he was.  “Which direction?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kanan told him.

Ezra hesitated.  He took a step, then stopped, turned back to face Kanan.  “What’s the point in this?” he asked.  “Shouldn’t I be using the Force when I do this?”

“Not yet,” Kanan said.  “I don’t want you to worry about that right now, I just want you to get used to moving around.  There’s nothing in the way, I’ll stop you if there is.”

Ezra sighed.  He turned away again and took another hesitant step, and then another.  “How long do I have to do this for?” he asked.

Honestly, Kanan didn’t know.  He didn’t know whether this was the right way to do this; all he knew was that it hadn’t been until he had felt confident putting one foot in front of another that he had been able to bring himself to even think about walking anywhere, Force or no.  Until then, he had been too focussed on his own fear of making a mistake to think about anything else.

That was where the cane would have been useful, if he had been able to bring himself to use it.  He had made the wrong decision there, and possibly cost himself months.

From somewhere external to himself, an intense feeling of relief washed over him, and he knew instantly that Ezra had removed the blindfold.  Relief was quickly chased by guilt and embarrassment.  He heard feet on the ground as Ezra turned to face him, then stood completely still in the middle of the room.

“I….” Ezra said.  “I don’t… didn’t like that,” he said.  “I mean… sorry.  I know that sounds bad.”

Kanan shook his head.  “It sounds honest,” he said.  “But Ezra, you’re going to have to…”  
  
“I know.”

Of course he knew.  Kanan sighed.  This hadn’t been the right way.  He remembered his own attempts to find his way around without his sight, not yet knowing how to use the Force to help. Yes, he had gotten there in the end, but it hadn’t been easy, and if he had had the option of removing a thing blocking his vision, he would have done it.  He took a few steps in Ezra’s direction and placed a hand on each shoulder.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “This wasn’t the right way.  I’m still working things out, I’m still trying to figure the best way to teach this stuff.  I made a mistake.”

Ezra shrugged, but Kanan could feel some of the tension disappearing from his shoulders.

But at least this mistake hadn’t resulted in Ezra almost dying in a fall from the top of the ship.  He had been focussing on the wrong lesson though.  Instead of trying to recreate his own experiences, he needed to make things better for Ezra.  He needed to teach him the right way to do things, not let him experience the wrong way.  Ezra could still see, and it was Kanan’s job to ensure that by the time his sight failed him, he would already know what he needed.  It was Kanan’s job to ensure he never found himself in the position in which Kanan had deliberately placed him.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“It’s fine,” Ezra said.

It wasn’t fine.  But it was done and the only thing he could do about it now was to try again, do it right.  “Okay,” Kanan said.  “How about this, you put the blindfold back on and we’ll work on reaching out with the Force and sensing an area?  Sound good?”

Ezra made a sound that was almost, but not quite, a laugh.  “I wouldn’t go  _that_  far,” Ezra said, “but it definitely sounds better.”

It felt better too, at least as far as Kanan could tell.  Ezra’s anxiety spiked again, but at a lower level.  The promise of starting to use the Force was a lifeline that Ezra grabbed hold of with both hands.

“Okay,” Kanan said.  “Whenever you’re ready.”


	6. Chapter 6

This was going to be fine. **  
**

Standing outside the door, Ezra took a deep breath and tried to ready himself.  It was just dinner.  He had eaten dinner hundreds of times before, a lot of them in this very room with these very people.  There was no reason to think that anybody was going to do or say anything that was going to make it awkward.

It was just dinner.

True, it was the first time they had done this in… he frowned, trying to remember exactly how long it had been.  Before they had come to Atollon, he was almost certain.  That meant before Malachor.  When Ahsoka had still been with them; when Kanan could see, and when things had been good.  Before everything had started to go wrong.

Well, no.  It had been after things had started to go wrong, or at least after he realized what was wrong with his eyes, but well before the rest of the crew suspected anything.  It had still been a better time, and if Hera thought she was going to be able to recreate that tonight, she was wrong.  They were different people now, all of them.  They weren’t going to be able to get that time back, no matter how much they might want to.

But it was just dinner.  Nobody had said they wanted to turn back the clock, only that it would be nice if they could get together again and share a meal.  And Hera was right, it had been too long since they had done that.  It had even been a long time since they had all been together in the same room.

Actually, now he thought about it, he was reasonably sure the last time the six of them were together in the same place at the same time, Ezra had been telling Sabine and Zeb that he was going blind.

Good times…

On the plus side, there was no way this was going to be as difficult as that had been.

Somewhere deep inside of him, a voice whispered that he shouldn’t have thought that; that he was tempting fate.  He ignored it.

It was going to be fine.

He had used to enjoy this.  Just hanging out, having an ample supply of food, feeling like he was a part of a family again, being with people that cared about him.  None of that had changed.  The only thing that was different now was him.  

On the other side of the door he could smell dinner being reheated, the same smell that had been emanating from the commissary for most of the day.  He had barely eaten today, and he felt his stomach begin to take notice.

It was just one meal.  How bad could it be?  The only problem was that every time he got together with any member of the crew, the conversation always circled back around to his eyes, and he didn’t want to do that now.  He didn’t want to talk about it; he didn’t want to  _think_  about it.  He had spent the better part of the afternoon blindfolded, trying to get to know the inside of the cargo bay using the Force.  It had been frustrating, and it had been exhausting, and although it hadn’t been as bad as it  _could_  have been, he didn’t know what he might do or say if anybody brought it up.

Kanan had told him he couldn’t guarantee anything, but that he didn’t want the conversation to go that way either.  Ezra had to hope that if it  _did_ , Kanan would be able to help him out by changing the subject.

Kanan shouldn’t have to do that.  Ezra should be able to deal with that kind of thing by himself.  He was going to have to learn how to do it eventually; how to either answer the question, or make it clear he didn’t want to, preferably while staying in the same room.  Any other day, maybe he would have been able to try it, but today, all he wanted to do was go hang out at the races with Hobbie, whom he knew wouldn’t bring it up unless Ezra did first, and then collapse into bed.

Of course, getting to the races after dark seemed to be growing more difficult every night.  Maybe it would be better to just go to bed.

He couldn’t do that though.  No matter how certain he was that the meal was going to be awkward and uncomfortable, he needed to be there.  His absence would be conspicuous, but not only that, with him not there they might ask Kanan about him, and he wouldn’t know it.  He wouldn’t be able to get an early night because he would spend the evening imagining what they were saying about him in his absence.

Most likely, he would spend the evening squashed in one of the ventilation shafts listening in just in case.

Honestly, he was too big for that now.  He could still fit; after all, they were designed so that an engineer could get in there if they needed to, but it was definitely becoming a tighter squeeze than it used to be.  That meant that whether he decided to go to dinner or not, he was in for an uncomfortable night.  He might as well make sure he got to eat a hot meal at the same time.

It was going to be fine.  If he could just keep his head down and not attract too much attention, nobody was going to say anything.  Nobody else wanted an awkward meal either.

But, what if  _he_  said something?  Not deliberately, of course, but the problem with trying not to talk about something was that it became all you could think about.  It already  _was_  all he could think about most of the time.

This was going to be a disaster.

He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Sabine.  He mentally kicked himself for the missed opportunity; he should have tried to identify the approaching person using the Force before he turned.

“Hey,” she said.  She smiled at him.  “Trying to decide if you want to go in?”

Ezra shook his head.  “No, I’m just…” he faltered, unable to think of an excuse for the fact that he was just standing there.  He didn’t know how long Sabine had been there, maybe she had been watching him the whole time.  “I’m not sure I’m hungry,” he said.

She laughed.  “You?  Ezra, you’re always hungry.  That’s what happens when you suddenly decide to grow twice as tall overnight.”

“Hey, it wasn’t overnight,” Ezra protested.  “And I’m not twice as tall either.  That’d be like… Zeb’s height or something.”  He had grown though, he remembered being shorter than Sabine; he didn’t exactly tower over her now, but he definitely had a few inches on her.

“Did I say twice as tall as  _you_  were?  That’s not what I meant.”  She grinned.  “You’re about twice Chopper’s height.”

Ezra scowled at her.  “I was already more than twice…” he broke off, “fine, whatever.  You’re still sore because I outgrew you.”

“Not in the slightest,” she insisted.  “In fact, I wanted you to grow taller.  It makes it so much more humiliating for you when I beat you in hand to hand.”

Ezra folded his arms.  “You think you  _beat_  me?” he asked.  “I let you win.  Anyway, I’d like to see how well you’d do in a lightsaber battle.”

“Well unfortunately for me, I don’t have a lightsaber,” she said, smiling a little wickedly.  “I’m not likely to find one laying around either, so you’ll have to settle for losing in other combat styles.  Ready to eat now?”  She opened the door and walked through.

“Fine, you might have beat me that one time,” Ezra said, “ _Might_  have.  But…” he paused, realizing he had walked through the door after her.

He glanced around.  Kanan was standing over a pot of stew, stirring it as it reheated, Hera was arranging spoons and a plate of flatbreads on the table, while Zeb was crowding bowls onto the surface near the heating element, ready to be filled.

Ezra cleared his throat, “Uh… but we’ll have a rematch sometime and…”  he glanced around again.  Had Sabine done that deliberately?  “And I’ll win.”

He turned to Hera and smiled awkwardly.  Sabine was going to pay for that.  It had probably been a good thing, or he might have stood out there in the hall all night, but she was still going to pay.

“Hey guys,” he said.  He folded his arms and sank into his usual seat at the table.  “It smells good.”

He watched Kanan grab a spoon, dip it into the mixture and take a taste.  “It doesn’t taste too bad either,” Kanan said.  “It’s ready whenever you guys are.”  He took a step away from the pot, and and turned to Zeb, next to him.  “Zeb, do you want to do the honors?”

Zeb shrugged.  He accepted the ladle that Kanan had been using to keep the stew moving in the pot, and poured a serving into each bowl.  Once they had been filled, Hera picked up the bowls and placed them on the table.

Spoons had been placed in a pile in the center of the table, and Ezra grabbed one, dipped it into his bowl, and moved it slowly around the edge.  He looked down at the contents of the bowl as he did.  It was tough to make out exactly what was in there.  It wasn’t because of his eyes – or he didn’t think so anyway – but due to the thick gravy that had turned everything the same shade of brown.  He reached for a piece of bread, ripped off a strip, dunked it, and tasted the stew.  It wasn’t bad, actually.

It was different to what they had eaten the last time they had been together like this, and back when they had been based round Lothal.  Meals back then had been simple.  Cooking facilities onboard were limited; heating something was easy, but cooking it wasn’t.  They had eaten bread, fruit and vegetables when they could get them, ration packs when they couldn’t.  For Ezra, every meal had been a feast.

He still had some of it; non-perishables that he had hidden underneath the table and into a pocket when nobody had been looking, secreted away ready for the next time he feared going hungry.  That time had never come.

“It’s not bad,” Zeb said.  He raised the bowl to his mouth and drank down a gulp of the stew like it was a drink.  “Just don’t ask what they mystery meat is though, right?” he laughed.

Ezra rested his chin in his free hand and stirred the spoon lazily around the edge of the bowl again, then plucked out a lump of something with his spoon.  He chewed it experimentally, swallowed, and tried another.  He didn’t think it was meat.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t bad.  Nothing so far had been as bad as he had feared.  Nobody had asked any unpleasant questions.  Although, come to think of it, nobody had said anything much at all.  The silence wasn’t  _awkward_ , not yet.  It was more like companionable.

“So, the project’s going well,” Sabine said.  “The painting on the ship.  I made a start on it the other day.  I’m just hoping it doesn’t end up having to go into space before I’m done, or it’s going to wind up looking uneven with parts more worn than others.  I’d have to start again.”

Hera nodded.  “I saw what you had so far, it’s looking good.”

Ezra kept his head down and concentrated on putting food in his mouth, half-listening to Sabine describe her latest project.  She hadn’t actually said what she was painting, and normally he would have asked, but it didn’t feel like a good idea right now.  Still, he should be glad she was discussing art in front of him at all, even if it was probably an attempt to fill the silence; a lot of the time she didn’t do that anymore.

“…Not exactly what I’d expected to read in a mission report,” Hera said.

Laughter burst out around the table, and Ezra realized he had missed something, too busy thinking to follow whatever path the conversation had taken.

“Yeah,” Zeb said, “those Namah Neimi missions can be pretty crazy.  Still, that’s nowhere near as interesting as the one Sabine and I went on.”

Sabine shrugged.  “I don’t think anyone else got one that ‘interesting’, Zeb.”

Zeb chuckled.  “Yeah.  I’m not complaining, because I’m going to be telling that story for years, but you really missed out by not going on that mission, Ezra.”

Ezra slouched a little further into his chair.  “Better things to do,” he mumbled.  That had been the mission he hadn’t been allowed to go on; the one that Kanan had told him he  _couldn’t_  go on unless he first told Hera, as commanding officer, and Sabine, who would have been with him, about the problems he was having with his sight.  He hadn’t wanted to do that, and had elected to make up an excuse instead.  Zeb had been sent in his place.

Hera knew that now, because he and Kanan had told her what was really happening almost as soon as Sabine and Zeb had left.  Ezra had assumed the others had worked it out, but apparently Zeb either hadn’t, or it had skipped his mind.  Either way, Ezra didn’t want to talk about it.

“Who wants flatcakes?” Kanan asked suddenly.  He got to his feet, grabbing his and Hera’s empty bowls while everyone around the table announced that they did.

Ezra felt himself relax.  Crisis averted.  Well, it hadn’t exactly been a crisis, it hadn’t been anything, but he couldn’t help but feel that he had gotten away with something.

* * *

 

Ezra wasn’t sure whether it was his imagination, or whether Kanan really did appear tense as he started preparing dessert.  It felt real, though if so, he didn’t know whether he was seeing it in the way Kanan was standing, or something he was doing, or whether he was sensing it through the Force.

He blinked and watched a little more closely, hoping that nobody would notice.

There was a slow, methodical quality to Kanan’s movements, like he was thinking too carefully about what he was doing, and it made the whole thing seem awkward.  Ezra watched, curious, until he realized what was happening.  He was seeing himself in those careful movements, that afternoon in the cargo bay when he had tried not to trip up or make a fool of himself in unfamiliar circumstances.  Kanan wasn’t comfortable with the actions he was performing here, and Ezra realized now why that was.  He recognised it from Kanan as well, from when he had been adjusting to his blindness, when he too had been unsure and insecure.

The last time Ezra had seen Kanan make flatcakes, some time ago, after a dinner much like this, he had done them quickly, with practised skill, mixing together the ingredients there and then, pouring the mixture almost theatrically into the pan from a height, talking and joking the whole time.

Today, he had gotten the batter ready beforehand.  No, he and  _Hera_  had gotten it ready beforehand.  Ezra knew why, of course.  Kanan hadn’t said it, even when Ezra had asked him, but he hadn’t needed to.  This was the first time he had tried to do this since losing his sight.

He imagined the process involved, from finding the right ingredients in their almost identical containers, to getting the right measurements, to a dozen other little things that Ezra hadn’t thought of that would have been so much more difficult, if not impossible, without sight.  Of course Kanan had needed help.  Of course he was uncertain of what he was doing.

And after having had help to prepare the mixture earlier, Kanan had practiced, making a couple of flatcakes, because he hadn’t known whether he still could.

Ezra wasn’t stupid, he could figure that out for himself even if Kanan didn’t want to talk about it.  If anybody else realized, they didn’t say so.  That was fine by Ezra.  He didn’t want to talk about it any more than Kanan did; it would lead on to other things that Ezra didn’t want to think about, much less discuss in public.

Luckily, Ezra didn’t cook.

Zeb cleared his throat.  “So, Hera, remind me to give you my report on what I found out by the perimeter tomorrow.  There was some interesting stuff out there.”

Ezra suppressed a shudder at the thought of the Imperial propaganda magazine Zeb had shown him, and grinned at the thought of how Hera might react.

“Oh?” said Hera.  “Anything I need to know now?”

Zeb shrugged.  “Probably not.  Well, actually yeah.  There’s some… stuff buried out there.”  His eyes shifted noticeably in Sabine’s direction.  “No idea  _where_  it might have come from.”

Ezra turned to his right just in time to see Sabine affect an innocent expression and stare down at her empty bowl as though she were suddenly fascinated by it.  Ezra thought back to the night before, trying to remember what else Zeb had mentioned finding.  All he could think of was the magazine he had shown him.  The one that he  _really_  wished he hadn’t seen.  There was no way Sabine had anything to do with  _that_.  There had been more, he knew it, but he couldn’t bring it to mind.

The flatcake mixture was in a bowl, rather than the jug Kanan had used last time.  Before, he had lifted the jug and poured the mixture into the hot pan until he had enough to make the right sized flatcake.  Today, he dipped a ladle into the bowl, lifted it out and held it in the air for a few seconds, weighing it with his hand while the dregs dripped back into the bowl.

Ezra glanced at Hera and realized she was watching Kanan almost as intently as he himself was.

Seemingly, though probably not, oblivious to the scrutiny, Kanan carefully tipped the ladle over the pan, allowing the batter to spread across the hot surface.

“What kind of stuff?” Sabine asked.  She was still staring down at her bowl, and although she appeared as though she was just making conversation, the Force told Ezra something different.

“That was going to be my question,” Hera added.  She was still watching Kanan as, instead of shaking the pan until the batter came loose before flipping it, he pushed some kind of flat spatula underneath and carefully edged it forward until the cake was no longer stuck to the pan.

“I don’t know,” Zeb said.  “The kind of stuff someone might have already been told was too dangerous to keep in a populated area.”

Sabine looked up at that.  “Sounds to me like it  _wasn’t_  in a populated area.”

“Pretty close to one though,” Zeb said.

Kanan lifted the flatcake on the spatula, turned it over and dropped it back in the pan.  He shook the pan slightly and prodded the top of the flatcake to check it had landed flat and unfolded.  He carefully put the spatula down next to the bowl and set the pan down on the heat.

Sabine pushed her bowl out of the way and leaned forward slightly, resting on her elbows and staring at Zeb.  Ezra blinked a few times, willing his vision to clear a little, trying to get a better idea of her expression, but it didn’t work.  Through the Force, it felt like a glare.

“Why don’t you tell me what the ‘stuff’ is?”  Sabine said.  “Who knows, maybe it’ll turn out to be completely inert unless it comes into contact with some other ‘stuff’.   _Maybe_  whoever put it out there knows exactly what they’re doing.”

“Maybe they do,” Zeb said, “but I think we all know that keeping secrets from the rest of us never ends well.  Maybe it would have been better to tell the truth.”

Was… that aimed at him?  Ezra couldn’t tell.  It could have been aimed at him, everybody knew he had been keeping secrets, or  _a_  secret anyway, but surely Zeb wouldn’t choose that moment to bring it up.  He shifted a little uncomfortably as he tried to reassess the conversation.  He had been distracted by what Kanan was doing, was it possible that he had misunderstood what was going on?  Maybe they weren’t talking about some mystery item that Sabine might have hidden; maybe they had been talking about him the entire time.  He had hidden something from them, and he had hidden it for a long time.  Of course they were still upset about it.

“Who wants to be a test subject?” Kanan asked.  He lifted it from the pan onto a plate and offered it to the table.

In one fluid move, Zeb got to his feet, grabbed the plate, sat down and coated it in a layer of syrup.  He cut it with a fork and stuffed a large piece into his mouth.  His eyes widened.  “That was hotter than I expected!” he gasped.  “But it’s good!” 

Kanan smiled.  He was already ladling another carefully measured amount of mixture into the pan; it sizzled loudly as it hit the heated surface.

Sabine sighed.  “Look, you want it moved, I’ll move it.  But honestly, I  _do_  know what I’m doing, and that stuff’s come in useful before.  You never had any problem with it when I was storing it on the Ghost.”

“You were what?!”  Zeb briefly looked up from his flatcake.  “Well if I’d  _known_  that…”

“Where did you  _think_  I was keeping it?”

Kanan shook the pan, not yet reaching for the spatula. Ezra watched in interest as the unfinished flatcake came loose and slid around the pan.

Zeb sighed and popped the final piece of his desert into his mouth.  “I guess I tried not to think about it.”

Ezra relaxed a little.  They probably weren’t talking about him, most of the conversation wouldn’t make any sense if they were.  It suddenly wasn’t as much fun anymore though.  Ezra cleared his throat.  “Maybe you should tell them about the other thing you found,” he said to Zeb.  “You know, the, uh… propaganda?  Guys, it’s horrible, you wouldn’t believe what the Empire…”

Zeb turned away sharply.  “Yeah… I probably shouldn’t have shown you that.  Maybe I’ll tell you guys another time,” he said.  He looked at Hera.  “I’ll give you a report in the morning,” he said.  “When I’ve decided what’s relevant.  I also found a few things out there that might have gone missing around the base.  Maybe we’ll be able to get them back to whoever lost them.”

Kanan turned to face the table, still holding the pan over the heat.  “Talking of missing things, Hera, you didn’t happen to find…”

“No,” she said, a little too quickly, like she was trying to stop him from saying something.  “I still have no idea what happened to it.”

Kanan shrugged.  He flipped the flatcake, again using the spatula.  The last time he had done this, he had flicked it into the air and caught it again.  He could probably do it again, using the Force and muscle memory.  The fact that he didn’t was significant.  He didn’t want to make a mistake in front of people.  Ezra understood that all too well.  The problem was, there was no way the others hadn’t noticed, and there was no way that wasn’t going to make them start to draw comparisons between the two of them.

Luckily, they appeared to be distracted.

“What did you lose?” Zeb asked.  “If it turned up out there, I’ll know about it.”

Kanan tipped the second flatcake onto another plate and ladled out another portion into the pan.  “I doubt it’s out there,” he said.  “I’m pretty sure it’s more hidden than stolen.”

Hera folded her arms.  “Kanan, I already told you, I wouldn’t…”

“Oh, I wasn’t talking about you,” Kanan promised her.  “I was thinking of someone else.”

“Let me guess,” Sabine said.  “Are we talking about someone small and mechanical?”

Chopper, who Ezra had barely noticed until now, backed away from the table slightly, protesting his innocence.

“Oh really?” asked Hera.  “You weren’t in my quarters last night?  So how’d you know we were talking about something that disappeared from my quarters?”

Zeb chuckled.  “She’s got you there, Chop.”

Kanan sighed and shook his head.  Whatever he had lost, Chopper had as good as admitted he had taken it.  Ezra couldn’t help but think back to what Kanan had told him the day before about losing things.  If he had put something down and Chopper had moved it for fun…

Ezra turned and glared at the droid.  Chopper, who had taken so much glee in deliberately getting in the way and tripping him, back when he had been struggling with his vision and and trying to keep it a secret.  Ezra didn’t know what Chopper had taken, but he was angry about it.  Not just on Kanan’s behalf, but on his own.  Who knew what the droid might decide to do to Ezra in the future?  Just because he hadn’t tripped him in a while, that didn’t mean it was over.  Chopper was probably biding his time, looking forward to coming up with new ways to torture him.

“Give it back, or you’ll be assigned to help AP-5 for a month,” Hera said.  She shook her head.  “Actually, no, I’ll give AP-5 the month off and you can have  _all_  his duties.”

Kanan shook the pan again to stop the flatcake from sticking, and this time flipped the thing in the air and caught it again.  He set it down on the heat again, apparently without even realizing what he had done.

Ezra glanced around the table.  Nobody else seemed to have noticed either.  He covered his mouth to disguise his smile.

“It’s fine, I have another robe, Hera.”

His robe; lost in Hera’s quarters.  Hera was looking down at the table suddenly, and Ezra wasn’t sure whether it was his eyes, a trick of the light, or whether her cheeks really had blushed a slightly darker shade of green.  It was no secret, or course, not really.  It just wasn’t something they talked about often.  It was private.

it was good to get a confirmation though.  Ezra tried to suppress the grin that spread across his face, at Hera’s discomfort, but it was impossible.  It didn’t matter anyway, Kanan couldn’t see it, and Hera was still staring down at the table.  He attempted to smooth it away with a hand, and tried to look elsewhere, and in the process found himself locking eyes with an equally embarrassed and amused looking Sabine.  She grinned, shook her head pointedly, telling him not to say anything — as if he would.

Ezra’s grin widened again, then immediately disappeared as it hit him how much he was going to miss things like that when he couldn’t see.  It could be possible to have a whole conversation without saying a word, but that was something that couldn’t possibly be replaced by the Force, probably not even with Kanan, but definitely not when the other person couldn’t even use the Force.

Suddenly, in a room surrounded by people he loved, he felt very lonely.

Kanan put another flatcake on his ‘finished’ pile, and moved the plate onto a heating plate to keep it warm while he worked on the next.

Sabine was looking at Ezra with concern now rather than amusement.  She reached across the table and cautiously touched his hand.  Ezra remembered the last time she had tried that; he hadn’t seen her, and he hadn’t reacted well.  This time, he had seen her coming, but he had also had sensed her intent.  She squeezed her hand around his once, quickly, and then backed away, her fingers brushing lightly over the back of his hand as she did.

Ezra nodded.  She was right, there were more ways than sight to pass on a message.

Kanan flipped another flatcake, and this time the others did notice.  He grinned and shook his head as a round of applause broke out around the table.

Ezra relaxed for the first time that evening.  The smell of dessert and syrup filled the air, his family were laughing together and everything felt… right.  Not like it had been the last time they had done this, but he had known that already; they couldn’t get that back.  This was different, but it felt like it might actually, eventually, be okay.

“Oh,” said Kanan.  “We found some fruit syrup too, if anybody wants it.”  He opened a cabinet and reached inside.  Ezra watched in bemusement as his fingers closed around something that was definitely not syrup.  Kanan turned around to face the table, holding a bathrobe in one hand and wearing a bemused expression.

Chopper backed away a little further, letting out a stream of binary laughter as he did.

The others joined in, Kanan included, and this was one occasion where Ezra couldn’t help but laugh too.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are loved.


End file.
